Help understanding a brushless control system
 

Hi all,
I have a little project I am making. I have made it before in the past with a brushed motor/ducted fan combo. That works great, however I need to upgrade the performance of this system. After doing some research I believe my best option is to go with a brushless setup if I can make it work. To my understanding a brushless system takes a motor, esc, battery, and radio receiver(input for speed control). Because of the constraints of this project, it is not feasible to wirelessly control it. So basically I want to know if there is a device, or other trick I can use to skip the radio receiver? I want to be able to turn the brushless motor off and on(full power) just like a brushed motor.
Thanks

servo tester
hi tech and a few others make them.
hobby king has one.