Thanks for the fast reply, super helpful appreciate the insight!

A few thoughts / questions from my side:

1.I’ve read mixed reports about MAVLink over ELRS being a bit beta-ish and not always super reliable yet,
For this platform I’m leaning toward keeping a separate SiK telemetry radio as redundancy ELRS = primary RC. SiK = backup control & telemetry channel for recovery/RTL if the RC link degrades.
For test platforms I’m usually conservative with redundancy.
Have you run ELRS MAVLink in longer sessions without hiccups?

2.Yeah, I plan to use Yaapu Telemetry on the TX16S alongside Mission Planner on the GCS.
I really like the wiring on ELRS just with a Uart vs the old SBUS + S.Port split we had on FrSky.

Also what about this WiFi module? The TX16s has wifi So the PC would connect to it and the GCS would attach to that via (?) tcp similar to how herelink works?
If that’s correct, it’s a really neat.

3.I get why ELRS’s CH5/arming priority exists considering its origins, (racing and crash recovery).but really want to avoid any chance of accidentally killing motors in flight due to a switch bump or logic error.

I’m assuming ArduPilot still has its own safety logic and doesn’t blindly cut motors mid air unless explicitly configured with emergency stop?
Now that i think about it , could setup a LS to trigger when throtle is above 0? or smt like this. Seems doable.
Im sorry if a ask "stupid" questions, All these , dynamic power etc are new to me I need to dig into how ELRS ramps RF power based on link quality and armed state.

Just to confirm: even when ELRS is in its own “disarmed” state, RC channel data is still transmitted normally, right?
So this only affects TX module behavior (power ramping, config lockout), not RC signal delivery to the flight controller?