I had an interesting incident this morning. Until this morning, I have had no problems with my heli. The esc/bec had passed the bec test and I have used rescue successfully.

I have a Blade 300cfx with Spirit, stock esc, and Lemon DSM2 satellite. After two problem free flights this morning, on the third flight things went awry. I turned on my DX9, put on throttle hold, normal throttle curve, and plugged in the battery. I noticed that the light on the satellite was flashing so my recollection of what happened next was I unplugged the battery, rebooted the DX9, activated throttle hold, and replugged in the battery. I noticed that the satellite was flashing again. The next thing I knew, the motor spun up with the throttle in the off position in normal mode. I turned the throttle hold switch on and off with no effect. The motor spun up to a high speed and then the swash started tilting backwards. I also tried switching between idle up and normal mode but no change. The left stick was in the low position the whole time. I could not turn the motor off. With the swash tilting, the heli eventually tipped over and the blades hit the ground, and the battery was expelled which then self destructed in flames.

The only thing I did not think to try was to turn off the transmitter.

Now I am wondering whether this is a transmitter, satellite, esc, or Spirit issue.

When I got home, I removed the blades, disconnected the motor and fired her up. No problems at all. I did it again with the motor connected and again no problems. I turned the transmitter off to check the fail safe and the motor stopped, so there is no problem there either. A transmitter range test was successful also.

Any thoughts, ideas?

Fortunately, it appears that the servos, feathering shaft, main shaft, main gear, blades (plastic) all survived. Only casualties were one battery, one servo arm broken and link lost, and one servo case mounting tab broken (Corona 919mg).

Very strange,

I guess that flashing satellite was indication of something bad.

This kind of strange behavior could be result of some problem with cable that is connecting satellite and the unit together.
They are very fragile so I recommend to carefully check it, especially in the ends.

Sometimes the cable is in the state that + and - is touching together randomly and can cause short in the unit.

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Spirit System developer

sorry to hear. Thankfully it ejected the battery or you'd be a lot worse watching it chicken dance until it tore itself apart.

I can't help with what your issue is, but wanted to mention best practice with the DX9. I noticed you say you have to 'turn on' throttle hold after booting DX9 up. You want to change the DX9 warning so it requires throttle hold be engaged before it will turn on, in my opinion.

To do this, you go to the warning screen and change the warning on throttle hold from off (the left square) to on (the right square). Now when you boot up the model it will beep and prevent power up if your throttle hold is off.

Thanks for the throttle hold tip. Now I can start the DX9 with throttle hold on.

I've checked and tested and everything works with no repeat of this morning's issues.

So I think the only thing left to do is to fly. I will watch the bootup of the heli carefully and will quickly disconnect the battery if anything out of the ordinary happens, before the blades start rotating. I have started everything up with no blades attached and so far everything has been normal.

Just a comment on the throttle hold warning. I found that the square to darken in the warning setup depends on which position the switch is set for throttle hold. The key is to darken the switch position that is for throttle hold off so that when the DX9 is turned on, it will give a warning for that switch position to indicate that the throttle hold is off.

Please try check these cables or at least try to re-connect the plugs. Sometimes there is bad connection yet it seems as if everything is OK.

I believe there is good reason for what you are observing.

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Spirit System developer

I have now reconnected both plugs and have also pulled on the cable and wiggled the cable at the connectors while it is powered up. Everything held with no momentary disconnects. I will also take my main shaft off and check and replace if necessary even though it does not appear to wobble when spooled up.

I suspect the cause of this incident was a bad satellite connection at bootup. I understand that there has to be a cause as things don't go awry for no reason. Unless there are other possible causes not yet investigated, I will carefully start her up and fly it once it's put back together.

Thanks for all the help.

I flew three batteries today and no problems. I'll keep an eye on the satellite to make sure that it always binds properly, just to be safe.

On another note, I purchased another Spirit on April 6, it was shipped on April 8, and it arrived here in Canada on April 14. Truly fast service.

Thanks for the info! I hope you will be satisfied.

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Spirit System developer