ESC Signs of failing ESC

[RMB677]

Flying my Blade 450 3D last night I had an occurance when the heli seemed to gain altitude without any input, there was no wind. I wrote it off to dumb thumb. A bit later it did it again but was heading for the pump house. I paniced, I couldn't regain control and crashed, stipped main gear, bent tail boom, broke the blades and probably a bent feathering shaft. Is there any way to determin if the probem was with the
ESC causing the motor to speed up? I fly in normal mode.

 

[coolgabsi]

Heli gaining height could have been sticky servos


Did you hear the heli speed up or slow down any during this?

Signs of a failing esc? Bench test the snot out of it. Remove blades... Spin it up, fill power and then vary power up and down, continuously .. See if it follows... Let it get a bit warm.. During the test. See if the system repeats behavior of adding collective by itself

 

[RMB677]

Had all the parts except a new main gear, I should have that by Friday but it deoesn't matter I'm working 9 to 6 Friday and Saturday. I'll try the bench testing and when I'm ready for a test flight I better move to the front yard where the only obstructions are trees.

Gaba, everything happened so fast I'm not sure if I heard it speed up or not, also I'm not sure if I heard the motor still running after the initial hit when I think I had the throttle down. I guess when I bench test I'll set my Tx, DX6i, to the monitor screen so I can make sure the Tx wasn't spiking.

 

[coolgabsi]

Had all the parts except a new main gear, I should have that by Friday but it deoesn't matter I'm working 9 to 6 Friday and Saturday. I'll try the bench testing and when I'm ready for a test flight I better move to the front yard where the only obstructions are trees.

Gaba, everything happened so fast I'm not sure if I heard it speed up or not, also I'm not sure if I heard the motor still running after the initial hit when I think I had the throttle down. I guess when I bench test I'll set my Tx, DX6i, to the monitor screen so I can make sure the Tx wasn't spiking.

I lost of signal can result in motor going high rpm and going high if the fail safe isnt set correctly

I had that issue ended up being loose batteries in my dx6i lol

Check all your bases

 

[RMB677]

Had a chance to bench test today, no main blades. About 4 min. into the test the motor pitch/rpms dropped. With making changes to the signal they went back up. This is probably what happened when I lost control, rpms dropped I gave more stick and they went up to where the stick said they should be. I'm guessing that this indicates the ESC is going bad. After 6 min. on the bench the ESC did not feel hot.

 

[RMB677]

Installed the new ESC yesterday and tested today. All is back to normal. I replaced the ESC in kind with one from Horizon Hobbies. I inquired about set up and was told that thier replacement ESC's are factory calibrated for the specific helicopter