Originally Posted by wfield0455

Not sure why you're still unsure what to assume. From your post it seems you understand the out of range mechanism that the ECUs use so there is nothing more to understand.The only way the ECU has to tell if the receiver has gone into fail safe is the pulse width of the throttle channel and if it goes out of range used for teach RC or goes away completely, then the ECU sees that as loss of signal and starts its shut down counter. There is nothing in the ECU to setup for fail safe, it's a built in function but for it to work you MUST configure fail safe on your RC system.

Spektrum automatically sets fail safe on your throttle channel when you bind but in order for it to work properly you must do a bit of a dance to create and "out of range" pulse width on the throttle channel. On my Jeti I can tell it to output anything I want but by default it does nothing (hold). It sounds like you already know what the ECU wants so all you need to do is figure out how to make your transmitter and receiver give the ECU what it wants. If I knew what system you're flying I may be able to help with that.
It's easy to tell if fail safe is set correctly simply by plugging a servo into your throttle channel, Set throttle to stop and observe the servo position, set throttle to idle and observe the servo position. Turn off the transmitter and see if the throttle servo moves to stop position or an even lower throttle position.If it goes to the stop position the ECU will see this as a normal shut down, if it goes lower it sees this as a signal loss and the shut down cause will be lost RC, if the servo does nothing (stays at idle or above) your turbine won't shut down at all..