There are things you can control.... And, well, things you could control, but maybe our out of your (your meaning everyone) league. I built a 27% aerobat and, luckily had the battery fail on a taxiing test, prior to any actual flying. Appearantly, what caused the battery to go flat was that one of the chip sets in the circuit board of the digital servo fell off due to improper soldiering!!! The servo locked and subsequently overheated the circuits, and burned up - it drained the battery completely and I had no response from the plane. I'm lucky to say that it happened during a turn-around. I made a take off speed pass just before that happened.

You can check and recheck, but some things are just out of your hands. I still won't be tearing my servos apart to see if all circuits are in-tact, etc. It'd be like tearing a motor down to make sure everything's OK. Sometimes luck and GOOD QUALITY CONTROL from the factory play a part in it too. I won't mention the brand servo (maybe later if they don't fix it for free - they were brand new servos), but IMHO, this should never have happened, but I'm sure, on occasion, it does. By the way, the servo was from one of the Big 3.

MPB