Bill,
I just opened the boxes containing a new W.H. 28% Edge. This will be my first gasser, so I have been following this thread with interest and a little trepidation ( I am a relatively new re-enty RC guy). The level of trepidation was raised a little by the fact that I am planning to use 5645s on the ailerons and elevators.
I have experienced a similar situation (Hitec HB475s..although I don't think the servo manufacturer is pertinent) in an airplane that I had been flying, without problems, for several flights. This airplane has an FMA FS8 receiver..no copilot..with the annunciator panel attached. Among other things, the annunciator panel will indicate the number of times during a flight that the receiver reverts to Fail-Safe mode. This is a PPM receiver but it has progamable fail-safe settings. I had not programmed the fail-safe in this particular plane (BTE Flyin' King).
On three consecutive flights the throttle, and only the throttle, would glitch to wide-open. The glitches lasted a few tenths of a second. At first I was not sure that I had not inadvertently opened the throttle myself (I have not been flying RC for fifteen years!!!). No other channel was affected at any time..just channel three. By the way, the transmitter is a one-year old Futaba T6XAs. All the batteries were charged and good, switches were all fine, no apparent source of on-board RF noise, just no indication of airborne anomalies.
After the third time this happened I finally thought to look at the annunciator. This set-up had been flawless in all (12 to 15) previous flights and I had grown lax about checking the annunciator after each flight. Anyway, the annunciator was indicating that the receiver had, in fact, reverted to the Fail-Safe mode. As the children say, "DUH!!".
I checked all of the airborne components and found nothing malfunctioning. I sent the transmitter and receiver to FMA for a check-out. The receiver was fine. The TRANSMITTER had drifted off frequency. According to the technician at FMA it is not uncommon to find TXs off frequency and not too uncommon to find them off-frequency right out of the box.
I am not an engineer or electronics technician so I can not verify what he told me. I do know that retuning the transmitter has apparently solved the problem. No more fail-safes, no more glitches, and the receiver is giving me much "cleaner" (fewer bad frames) range checks than ever before.
I think I will still use Hitecs in my Edge and an FS8 PPM receiver. However, the entire airborne system is going to be "burned-in" for a few hours prior to the first flight.
Good luck with your plane-wrecking anomalies. And, keep this thread going.