How to Troubleshoot your electric rc airplane

Symptom

Diagnosis

Fix

Nothing seems to work

Throttle cable not plugged into Rx (BEC system)

Plug lead from ESC into throttle channel

Loose connection

Check connections and resolder if necessary

Servos work, but throttle doesn't

Motor not plugged into ESC

Plug in motor

Low Voltage Cutoff reached

Charge batteries

ESC hot, burned, smoking

Too much current through ESC

Reduce prop size

Plane crashed, stalling prop and drawing too large a current

Throttle back after crash. Better yet, don't crash.

When plane Rx glitches, motor cuts out

ESC may have glitch SW cut back throttle to prevent accident

Move throttle stick on Tx to zero, try to power up again

Plane works fine but wire connectors melted

Cheap connectors not capable of high current performance

Replace connectors with Sermos, Deans, Astroflight

System glitches excessively

May be noise generated by the ESC

Increase the distance between ESC and Rx