Surging power?

[ryem3]

Just got mine together after a serious rebuild. I notice that the power is surging, resulting in the tail moving of course, but you can hear the RPM surge. I crashed and was a bit slow to hit TH. Is it possilbe the ESC is bad? What are the symptoms of a bad ESC, other than watching it smoking!?

[helidude3]

that happens when the batteries go below a certain voltage. Make sure your batteries are fully charged.

[ryem3]

I know. It totally seems like the ESC voltage cut off. But I have it on the middle cutoff setting and I've been running at that level for a while. Put 8 fresh packs through it, so it isn't the pack voltage. Could be that the cutoff is malfunctioning. I might try to reprogram it anyway.

[helidude3]

if its not that, then it is a bad esc. It seems like many of them go bad.

[devmode]

This might be a dumb suggestion, but I had to redo my pitch curves after a rehaul because I ended up with a different feel after adding some things to the situation (16 tooth pinion, metal tail slider). At first it had the feeling of surging, but really I think the pitch curves were too dramatic with a different head spead.

[gravydrive]

Make sure you're not in gov mode.

[ryem3]

Originally Posted by gravydrive

Make sure you're not in gov mode.

Wrong! Switched it to governor mode and it runs well. Seems that the voltage cutoff is not working at the right level. Tried it at high, mid and even the third setting. Still kept cutting off. Switched it to governor mode and now it flies well. In fact, the governor mode seems pretty powerful. Not sure if this will have much of an impact on flight times, but it responds well to pitch inputs. Guess the ESC is bad. And this sucker is expensive - $40. I saw on another thread that someone is selling motors and ESCs for $40. Painful.