Epilogue: I've been through the flight log, and had enough other weird occurrences to finally get a handle on what happened.
My house sits among tall pines, but there are numerous areas that are open to the sky--for example my driveway, which is where I launch most flights from. Five seconds into this flight, with the
MA2 hovering 4 ft off the ground and right in front of me, it established the home point. Unfortunately, it established the home point 30'-40' away, where there are some tall trees. I'm guessing this was a GPS error. Anyway, since I'm new to this, I didn't check the map to see where the home point really was. Later when I pressed the RTH button, it obediently moved to this mis-located home point.
From where I stood, it didn't look to be directly over the trees, and part of me was thinking that it would be heading back to where I thought the home point was. I triggered autoland, and that's when it descended into the tree. Fortunately, It just barely clipped some needles before I got it the heck out of there.
I understand the home point error. I still am not sure why the obstacle avoidance systems allowed it to descend into a tree. I need to look into this a little more.
Anyway, this whole episode turned out to be very helpful for several reasons. Perhaps most importantly, I am now VERY cognizant of the location of the home point. I had a flight the other day where the homepoint was established in the middle of a lagoon (yikes!). And I am also now less trusting of the automated features of the
MA2. I mean the thing is a marvel, I just need to be sure it is doing what it is supposed to be doing.
Thanks for the input and interest!