Had another low altitude tail motor shut down and subsequent crash onto the skids. This time the TX batteries went dead. I have been using 2500 Mah Nimhs and recharging them with a 15 minute fast charger. The red light was not on at all when I started. Bought some new batteries and everything is back to normal.

The main ESC (Otter 25 amp) says it has automatic detection and li-po shut down with a gradual shut down, but there's no info on when it shuts down (what voltage) or if its programmable. I can hear the main motor slow just slightly and I land immediately. Not sure I trust it, as my balancer shows the batts are sometimes below 3.6 volts per cell before charge up.

I liked the Direct Drive setup better than the gear drive with a bigger tail rotor, but the heat it generated was too much. It was much more responsive. Maybe a better motor would do the trick.

A guy on youtube had a brushless tail set up and it worked great (on a Blade CP). My question is: do you think he got more than one flight out of it before the tail motor burned up?