marksmu

Ok, I have been posting alot so Ill keep this short.

Ive got a Phoenix 25 ESC connected to a Park 370 brushless and a 1900 mah 3cell lipo from Thunderpower. Ive done some flying with this thing, and it seemed to work great...Today was not such a day. I lost power and crashed, and when I got to the plane to pick it up, the motor was still trying to turn despite the throttle being off...it would try then stop and try then stop. I touched the motor, it wasnt very hot, so I touched the speed control, and it was quite hot. The battery was pretty weak and the plane was damaged so I did not check yet to see if I fried the speed control, but my question is pretty much this:

Isnt the Phoenix 25 overkill for the 370 brushless? I was running it with a GWS 8x4 prop that comes standard with the Mustang and the Zero and the himax 6.3 to 1 gearbox...I have the same setup in both, and have not had problems with the other, but this was my first flight over 15 minutes. Battery was not even warm to touch either.

Anybody have this same problem? Anybody have any recommended settings in the programming of this ESC for a setup like this?

Any input is appreciated.

THANKS!

Matt Kirsch

My Feedback: (21)

Don't leave out the possibility that you did absolutely nothing wrong, and the ESC simply failed. "Ship" happens, if you know what I mean...

From the sounds of it, the ESC is toast. I would send it in to Castle Creations for analysis and possible (probable?) replacement. The guys at Castle are busy folks, but they do take care of their customers, and they stand behind their products 100%. Just send it in with a friendly note explaining the situation.

How old was this one? IIRC, at one point quite a while ago there were some Phoenix 25s going out with shoddy chips on them due to a supplier issue.

marksmu

WEll this phoenix was about 1 month old...I got home yesterday after work, recharged my battery, and turned it on again and it seemed to work fine, I may have to do a bench test on this setup before putting it into another plane. Those Foam planes from GWS dont take kindly to a 30mph nose in crash.

It seems to be working right now though, so I will have to do some experimenting on this thing.

Thanks for the input!

wreck_em_all

As an aerospace engineer I deal with a condition in electronics known as Single Event Upsets (SEU). There are a wide range of bad things that happen to electronics in space including SEUs. It sounds like something equivalent to an SEU caused the microcontroller in the PHX-25 to go "nuts" causing the symptons you described. This is strictly a random event - no harm no foul. You are wise to thouroughly check everything out, but I suspect your ESC is OK.

TaSaJaRa

I had a Phoenix 25 get hot as you say yours did. But I didn't crash because I was only pulling around 10amps most of the time.
If I had been running a higher amp draw I too could have crashed. Because more than one chip could have died on me.
Check on the speed control where you have 3 chips at one end in a row or even the back side to see if any got hot enough to melt the cover.
If so you could have had a fet chip go bad. I had this problem , called CC up told them the problem, they sent me a new one out that week .
Also with a pre-paid mailer to send the bad one back to them. Great customer service !!!!!
They buy top quailty parts by the thousands and from time to time they still have some to go bad.

Pic of my bad esc below>>> Note: the red circle around the bad fet chip where it melted the plastic.

raptorite

I'm not sure if I am allowed to post a link to another forum, but I think you should take a look at http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=354845 as there is a problem with cc phoenix 25 controllers.

bp2005

marksmu: You did not say what servos you are using and how many? When you use 3 Lipos C C says
to cut the servo load to 3 servos and only 2 high torque servos on a Pheonix 25. It could be the BEC
is heating up in your ESC.
Bob

marksmu

I am running 3 servos, all HS-55's off the phoenix 25....if it cant control 3 micro servos something is wrong.

I am going to contact CC today and find out what gives...now. I throughly checked my wiring, it is all fine, the battery is fine, the motor is fine when hooked up to my Phoenix 35 it is amazingly better. When you run it up to just under 1/2 throttle the ESC starts to cut out the throttle, and then it will re-engate momentarily before it craps out again...it is too hot to touch at that point. Furthermore...I noticed that the plastic on one of the chips melted so it was Smoking hot when it finally crashed. I wasnt even over 1/2 throttle when it went down...I should in my humble opinion be able to get more than 1/2 throttle out of this thing without it melting my plane in half.

Like I said I am calling CC today to find out what they think I hear good things about their customer service so I will update this later with the discussion....seems that link to the other forum hits on my problem exactly..

Mark

marksmu

Talked to CC< they said this setup is well within the operating range of the 25,, and that it is most likely a problem on their end. They are replacing my 25 by mail, and I just have to drop my old one into a prepaid envelope they are sending it with.

Great Customer Service. Hopefully the new 25 will work better than the one Ive got now....