Align 75A ESC up in smoke

[john2]

Hi folks,

Thought I would post some pictures of my Align 75A ESC that burnt up. I'm not sure what happened to it. This was to be my second time to fly the Hurricane today and right as I started to spool up I saw smoke coming from under the canopy. I yanked it off thinking one of the batteries might be catching on fire. As I got the canopy off I immediately saw that it was the ESC, I then started trying to get my babied FlightPower Evo Light 4250 batteries away from the ESC. This is the second Align ESC that I have had do this in my short time in this hobby. The other was a 35A on a HDX-450.
Is anyone else experiencing this type of thing with Align, or any other brand of ESC's? I'm thinking I'm going to try a Castle Creations on the Hurricane. I'm using them on the HDX 450 and they seem to work great, plus the support from Castle has been great for me on a CC35 ESC that I messed up when the motor wires shorted.
Last picture is of one of my Air Thunders that couldn't hold up to the demands of the Century 600+, lesson learned.

[Mikej]

Judging by the motor wires etc. you only just got it off in time - well done

[john2]

Judging by the motor wires etc. you only just got it off in time - well done

Yeah, I was lucky it just smutted up the motor wires and batteries. I cleaned it up good with an alcohol soaked rag. I am hoping the motor was not damaged. The batteries used up about 8% of their charge during the burn down. It all happened in probably less than 30 seconds.

Looks like I will be using another Align 75A ESC. I just got a bargain in the classifieds. Maybe a good deal will come along on a Castle.

I really enjoy flying this heli even though my skill level is at the crawling stage. So far I have been able to avoid introducing it to mother earth unintentionally as I do quite often with my HDX-450. I just do forward flight, nose in, forward loops and stationary flips. Trying to learn inverted now. Anytime I get disorientated I quickly try to get the tail pointed to me as it is most comfortable for me.

It is the model with the bling and fiberglass canopy. It has the revco pinion and gears added, trex 600 thrusted tail, RCP 500 carbon blades, Century 600+ motor, Airtronics 94761 on cyclic, JR DS-3400G gyro servo, 401 gyro with Spektrum DX-7 and AR7000 receiver. This setup seems to work very well to my very limited ability. The thing screams when full stick is thrown to it.

Oh yeah, I get most all my stuff from ReadyHeli. Great folks to deal with. Thanks John and Jen

John