Thermal Shutdown

[skigolfmike]

I got in 4 hover flights tonight. The last ended with 2 autos when the ESC shutoff. When we felt it after the 2nd time, it was very hot. (as in it was burning hot).

Have I burned up a speed control? Will using a BEC and bypassing the ESC fix this. I am running a 401 gyro and a 3400G on the tail. I do have a lot of head speed. Will post some video I shot later.

Got any ideas. Thx in advance

[int2str]

I don't think your BEC is the problem. If the ESC gets this hot, I'd investigate your power train first.

- Which motor are you running? Stock?
- What blades are you using? Stock woodies, Align yellow/black, Align white CF etc?
- What's your headspeed (and/or throttle curves?)
- Is your belt too tight?
- Is the motor->gear mesh tight or smooth?
- Are your blades tracking well?
- How many minutes do you fly per battery?

[skigolfmike]

Good questions.

Motor is stock as are the blades
Throttle curve is 0-40-65-80-100, head speed is about 2800 normal and 3000 idle-up
Belt tension and gear mesh are good. It spins pretty free and doesn't spool down slowly.
Just did a setup with he DX7. Blades are very slightly out of track, probably a 1/2 turn on a link and it will be perfect.
I get about 6 minutes with the stock battery in hover. When I start to lose head speed, I quit.

I was flying a ThunderPower 2100 when it had the thermal shutdown. I was about 4 minutes in and I had lost of battery left.

First time this has happened.

[sokal]

Good questions.

Motor is stock as are the blades
Throttle curve is 0-40-65-80-100, head speed is about 2800 normal and 3000 idle-up
Belt tension and gear mesh are good. It spins pretty free and doesn't spool down slowly.
Just did a setup with he DX7. Blades are very slightly out of track, probably a 1/2 turn on a link and it will be perfect.
I get about 6 minutes with the stock battery in hover. When I start to lose head speed, I quit.

I was flying a ThunderPower 2100 when it had the thermal shutdown. I was about 4 minutes in and I had lost of battery left.

First time this has happened.
not to sure on this but WOLF has the same issue with hot esc and is using the same thro curve. i recomended to him to make sure u let it soft start to 50 before continuing since your 50 is before mid stick softstart to 1/2 stick let rpm catchup then continue

he noticed it ran a little cooler weather that was the reason not to sure

u know the set up i run and i dont have a hot esc nor motor nor batt

and i use stock curve in normal and changed mid thro to 90 in stunt
i mostly fly in stunt now so head speed for me is between 90-100
and flight time is 6-7 depends on what im doing

[LockMD]

I read of this prob on rcgroups and have added an external bec for insurance, so far, so good but who know I may not have the prob without it either. Sure does have a purty light though LOL

[skigolfmike]

One other thing to add. I checked the motor and ESC after each flight. It was fine for the first 3 flights of the evening. Even on the 4th flight, when I got the shutdown, the motor was cool and the battery just slightly warm.

On initial windup, I take it pretty slowly up to 1/2 stick and then I let the rpm stabilize before liftoff. IMHO, 15 seconds is too long for slow-start, but I always wait.

I think I'm going to try an external BEC and I'll pull the red wire from the ESC connector to see if that helps.

I'll call Horizon too and see what they think.

[LockMD]

I think I'm going to try an external BEC and I'll pull the red wire from the ESC connector to see if that helps.

I'll call Horizon too and see what they think.


I installed the sportbec dont have to cut any wires.

[skigolfmike]

I called Horizon. They are sending me a new speed control. I may still get a BEC though.

Here's the crazy part. I flew it at lunch today. Same battery pack as last night, TP 2100, 15C, not recharged, and the speed control didn't even get warm. All I did was hover and I got about 3-4 minutes hovering. I even went into idle up mode for a while.

One thing I did notice was the head speed did not seem like it as high as it was last night. Maybe it was because I was outside and there wasn't any noise reflection. Last night when I lifted off into hover, the head speed really cranked up. It did not do that at lunch today.

[BKF]

For what it's worth, I get about 9 minutes or so of hovering on my stock battery and don't hit the low voltage cut off.

This is with HS65MG servos, 401 gyro and 3400 tail servo.

Sounds like something is a little tight on your bird.

[skigolfmike]

I thought about that. When I got the bird the belt tension was too tight and the gear mesh had no backlash at all. I fixed the belt tension (BTW, the belt stretches during the first few battery packs) and set the main gear mesh. I also lubed the belt with Tri-Flow. My heli spins very free.

What may be different is my throttle curve. I am running 0-40-65-80-100 on the normal throttle curve. Maybe, I try the stock curve again for comparison, but I like the way the heli hovered with a little more head speed.

Will post a video from last night once I get it edited.

[skigolfmike]

It was fairly nice out, so I charged up the TP 2100 battery and decided to time it in hover after work. I didn't quite get a full charge (I was close) and I got 8:28 in hover when the voltage protection started to kick in. I don't think there's anything really binding up in mine since it takes a long to spin down after landing.

I'm going to check some mechanical things tonight just to be sure. I will also try to get the hover video posted too.

[sparx-]

You guys are going to kill your batteries in a very short time if you continue to run them for 8+ minutes. Have you guys figured out how many mah you are using and if you are using more then 80% of your packs?

SPaRX

[LockMD]

I used to get 9 mins on a 2250 batt but since I installed a camera mount I'm only getting 8 mins and I am putting about 1800 back in so yup right around 80%

I may be taking off that mount soon....

[Kindling Maker]

OK this is a stupid question what is a BEC?

[skigolfmike]

BEC = Battery Eliminator Circuit

It's used to bypass the BEC circuit built into the ESC when you have either high current servos or when you have 4S battery packs or greater because the ESC BEC would overheat.

[skigolfmike]

My stock ESC is shaky. I have another on the way, but will it be better than the last. So, I did some research about the Phoenix ESCs. It seemed a Phoenix 35 would be about right, so I got that, a ccbec and a Castle Link to set it all up. Well, the BEC was no problem by itself. I changed it from 5.1V to 5.5. Then I tried programming the ESC and the program wouldn’t see it. Finally I figured I had to hook up the battery while it was connect to the Castle Link (CL) to get it to work.

So, I get it the ESC programmed, pull the red wire from the connector, put the bullet connectors on the ESC and I’m ready to go. Wrong. Now it won’t initialize. I talked to Castle and went over the whole process with them. I’ve got several things to try. If that still doesn’t work, I can call and get a new one.

I am really looking forward to using this speed control. It has a governor mode which I’d really like to try. I figure it would be really good on hover and for idle up. At the rate I’m going, all I have to do is change the motor and the only electronics left stock on the bird will be the receiver.