Castle ICE 120HVs (2)

[keithbradley]

Selling these to anyone interested. One is fried and needs to be sent in for warranty. The other one works but I was going to send both in for warranty and start over with two new ones. I only ran (tried to run) them a couple times and could never get them figured out. Im taking a break from building boats for now and just enjoying what I already have so I wont be needing these.

SOLD takes the pair

[Fluid]

With no action on this FS I wanted to pass on that Castle has identified a problem with this aircraft controller which could be related to the seller's issue. Even though the failure rate was low (less than 3% out of 10,000 units) Castle is fixing the problem making these items much less of a risk to a buyer. Below is an e-mail I received today:

ICE HV 120 Service Advisory July 18, 2011

Hello all,
While we take all controller failures seriously, many have felt that our response to the HV120 problem was taking too long. We didn't make any official statements as we couldn't identify any particular pattern or cause for the failures. Our Repair Dept. keeps track of our returns and the returns - for any reason -- on the 120HV were actually very low, less than 3%. Given that we've produced more than 10,000 of these, that low percentage still results in a lot of upset customers.

We were able to test -- and destroy -- a number of HV 120s last week with the help of a very talented heli pilot. Through this process we determined that some, again some, setups stressed a particular component in a way that caused controllers to fail instantly. Adding capacitance to the setup did show promise as a fix but it is a rather cumbersome solution.

Unrelated to this particular problem, Castle has been working with a major component vendor to build these particular components to our specifications. We recently received a small quantity of sample parts for evaluation. We gave the new components a shot in the HV 120s and found that they were a very tidy and complete solution to the issues that we identified.

We therefore are going to offer all who wish to return their HV120 for one that has this modification an opportunity to do so. We would ask that all retailers and distributors contact Christy Graham

As mentioned above, the new component is just now coming into production and we don't have them in stock. We hope to have them as early as this week (July 18-22).

We will post particulars as to how to go about returning these and what the turn around time may be once we get those parts. Our Tech Support and Warranty people don't have any additional information, so calling them at this point will only lead to more frustration.

We apologize for any problems this matter may have caused, and we hope that our candor and willingness to repair these controllers will help maintain your trust in our products and service. We appreciate your loyalty and look forward to putting this behind us all and going flying again.

Thanks,

Lee Estingoy

for Castle Creations, Inc.

[keithbradley]

Thanks for the info Jay.

These are still available. If someone wants $460 worth of ESCs for $175 here's your chance. Send them in and get brand new! I'm getting away from boats for a while to concentrate on other things so I wont be needing them.

[keithbradley]

Last price drop before I send these in for replacement. $150 shipped for the pair.