General

Mission planner is an open source ground station program for use with the mavlink protocol. It has been designed in tandem with the ArduPilot firmware. The program has several different functions. Each is listed at the top of the screen.

Flight Data Screen

The flight data screen will be the most frequently used. This has your aircraft instrumentation in the Primary Flight Display (PFD), flight controller status messages, and a satellite map representation of the aircraft's location. The pane on the bottom left has several tabs at the top of it for different sub-functions. Typically this will be on the Quick menu or the messages menu to display aircraft status.

Config/Tuning Screen

This screen is used to change the mission planner settings as well as change the aircraft's parameters. The parameters on the aircraft have been carefully chosen and tuned for the aircraft's configuration. It is not recommended to change any of these settings outside of RTL altitudes.

Additional Information

https://ardupilot.org/planner/docs/mission-planner-overview.html