My Helicopter:
HK 250 electric, Align cyclic servos, MKS tail servo, Align 250 size main motor, Castle Talon 25 ESC 8 amp BEC, Spirt FBL controller, Spektrum DSMX satellite, Transmitter Walkera DEVO 12s deviation v4.0.1 firmware, Turnigy 800 mah battery. Governor in Spirit is disabled.

I have several hours of flying time on this helicopter with this configuration. I have mostly used Spirit firmware v1.1.0 and older. I have had no problems.

Last week I updated to FW v1.3.2 (required for v2) and then to FW v2.0.1. I repeated the entire setup for the helicopter without problems. Today I flew for the first time with v2.0.1 and the helicopter flew normally (idle up mode about 95% throttle) for about 1:30 to 2:00 minutes then the main motor just stopped as if the throttle hold had been activated. I was in a hover at about 20 feet altitude. The helicopter descended straight down as the rotor lost energy; landed on the skids; bounced back up in the air as the motor started spooling up again. I maneuvered off the runway and hit throttle hold so the helicopter would land in the grass.

After I picked up the model the Spirit was still booted up. I tested flight controls and rescue and all was normal. When I checked the flight log later there was no flight log saved from the trouble flight. While testing on the bench with the Spirit software I couldn't find anything wrong but I noticed the log file started over by itself after being booted up for maybe 30 to 45 minutes as if I had disconnected the battery and started a new log. Is it supposed to do that?

I tested the battery; it is in excellent condition. The only thing different is the Spirit firmware version. Everything else checks normal. I ran the Spirit stress test numerous times with no problems other than an occasional "cyclic ring activated" or "rudder limit reached" message in the log.

I have no idea what happened to cause this other than the possibility the ESC/BEC is beginning to fail and just by coincidence I updated the firmware in the Spirit last week? But shouldn't that have been saved in a log?

Edit: Sorry I'm not very good with log files; never needed them before. I attached the first log file Spirit made after powering up the first time after the problem flight. Not sure if this is the log that was generated during the flight. Not sure what "Data are not available" means.

OK; I think I see the problem described in this post:

viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1393

When the governor function was added to the Spirit firmware some additional throttle settings were also added. I think I just need to calibrate the throttle settings and the ESC maybe. The Castle Talon ESC is complicated enough already.

I still don't understand the "Data are not available" in the Spirit log though.

Yes, you are right. Without reconfiguration it will not work correctly.

If you can see that Data are not available it is not a problem. Data are recorded in a backward direction (latest data with the biggest priority).
When the power supply is disconnected from the unit, unit is saving the log. If the unit loosen the power too fast, it may not save the oldest data.
So this does not mean that something is wrong.

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Spirit System developer

Thank you for your reply.

I started trying to adjust the throttle today. I don't think anything was out of adjustment enough that would have caused the motor to stop; but it did stop on the flight I mentioned. I had damage to the helicopter when it landed hard after the motor quit.

I don't see why Spirit doesn't just pass the throttle channel to the ESC or throttle servo without changing it. The last firmware version worked fine. I regret having updated it to version 2 now. I've never liked the Castle ESC compared to the Align ESC just because the Align is so much easier to use. The Castle claims more power output so that is what I bought.

It would be nice if the Spirit software just had an option to disable any throttle channel processing and just pass the signal like it used to. Is it possible to flash back to v1.1.0?

I don't yet understand the micro seconds adjustments. I decreased the minimum value on the governor page (from 1100 to 1070) and the ESC beeped at a higher throttle setting; not lower.

I have to take a break from this for now. It's just too frustrating right now. It is going to take me hours to finish repairing mechanical damage from the crash and figure out what to do in the TX and the Spirit software to hope to prevent this from happening again. I've been reading the other threads on the whole Castle ESC fiasco but so far haven't figured a resolution.

Just learn thr end points by using the Spirit channel for thr....

The manual end points are needed if you use the gov. Not you learn the endpoints properly.

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[b]-TT E700 V2-Spirit Pro-mks950-980-Kontronik Kosmik 160 HV -Pyro 700 rewound by PD / Voodoo 600 -PD-MX700-470kv--BLS255hv-VBAR 5.3+- Gaui X3+ Spirit Pro

Not true, actually... that's depending on the ESC.

In all cases, first thing is to change the TX range to have the Diagnostic screen correct.

If the ESC can calibrate to the signal (the ones which you initiate with stick up, wait beeps, lower stick, and so on), you don't need to use the Spirit "min and max" manual endpoints.

But if the ESC is one of those that require you to change the signal range to match the ESC (like Castle Creations), then you need to do that procedure using the Spirit min and max, regardless of you using the Governor or not.

There is also another scenario, if you use a full receiver and throttle does not go through Spirit, of course the Spirit min and max are useless, there's no Diagnostic screen involved and you do the range changes in the TX.

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Thank you for the comments; I checked the range of the throttle channel on the Spirit software diagnostic page; it was 0% to 100% perfect match with the transmitter. I returned the minimum and maximum settings on the governor page to the default 1100us min, 1900us max and then ran the Castle ESC throttle calibration plugging in with the throttle at 50%. I was not able to reach the high endpoint of the Castle ESC and the low endpoint beeped at about 14%. These are the settings I was using when the motor stopped in flight. I've since set the Spirit governor page to 1160us min and 1940us max which provides the Castle ESC high endpoint beep at 98% and the low endpoint beep at 5%. So the Spirt FBL controller endpoints now extend beyond the Castle ESC endpoints.

In my mind this still does not explain why the motor stopped during flight. So what if the Castle ESC throttle never reached 100%. Maybe it only reached 95%. What difference does that make? What if I fly in normal mode and never open the throttle beyond 80%? Does that mean the Spirit FBL controller is going to cut off signal to the ESC.? Obviously it shouldn't. Nor should the ESC just decide to stop the motor just because it was never commanded to 100%.

Either the Spirit FBL controller stopped sending ANY throttle signal to the ESC or the ESC miraculously decided to fail right after a firmware update. I haven't test flown again yet; I still have to find what's bent on my main rotor. As I mentioned in the original post there are no faults with the wiring or the battery and I don't think the main motor broke and then fixed itself. I'll just have to see but it will be hard having any confidence in this setup.

edit: Governor in Spirit and in ESC has always been disabled as mentioned in OP. I don't use governors.

Some of the things I read still make me think you are not doing the calibration correctly, but maybe it's my bad English.

After making sure the Diagnostic page reads 0 to 100, you don't touch your TX end points anymore. The calibration is done modifying the Spirit min and max only, treating them as the end points that need to match the ESC. Which they actually are ))))))

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Oxy 2 ♦ X-Vert ♦ Warp 360 ♦ Blade 450X ♦ Blade 450X Nightflyer ♦ Goblin 500 (RIP) ♦ 2 X mCPX v2 ♦ night fly mQX ♦ LadyMQX ♦ nano QX ♦ nano QX FPV ♦ Inductrix ♦ DX8 G1

Hi, Thanks for the comment. Most likely it's my English that's lacking. What I meant was I set the software back to what it was when the motor quit just to see what it did. After that I set it to what is supposed to be "optimum" setting for the Castle ESC.

After thinking more I've decided to replace the ESC before further flight. I ordered a new ESC from Hobby King that uses the same ESC calibration as the Align ESC does but it has 20 amps output instead of Align's 15 amps. It's possible there was something wrong with the Castle. I don't know how long an ESC is supposed to last.

I was hoping Tomas (ZeXx86) could comment on my last post quoted above. It doesn't make sense a slight throttle miscalibration would cause the motor to stop.

Hello George,

to answer your question about throttle range. If your ESC will not see e.g. more than 80% from the unit, this mean that for the unit 80% is 100% (or whatever percentage you will see in the diagnostic when you set your throttle curve to the max value).
For the ESC and unit it is not a problem at all - it will work, but you will just not achieve TC higher than 80% (from ESC's point of view). On the other hand, if you will exceed 100% in the unit, the only thing you will see, that the throttle is not increasing anymore.

Spirit will never turn off the throttle - once it was initialized, there is nothing that can't turn it off.
Especially if you are not using governor from the unit, it will only retransmit the data (+ possibly change the range little bit).

From my point of view, what are the most usual reasons for these cases are:
a) throttle cable of the ESC was cutted over an edge of the frame (even nearly invisible cuts can cause this) - please check the cable carefully.
b) ESC reached max. temperature and cutted the power.
c) some soldering joint was not good and motor failed (ESC stopped to not damage anything).

The most often reason is point b) that may happen easily if motor timing is not accurate or motor PWM frequency too high.
And even Throttle frequency in the Spirit settings can affect the temperature theoretically.

I always recommend to look at the things that changed in any way before it happened.

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Spirit System developer