Well what an abysmal day of testing. Nothing but trouble.
On the last outing a couple of weeks ago,the ESC had water in it. I removed the heat shrink & dried it out but it appears that it still had a problem.
It was cutting in & out. I thought it was the receiver at first so I changed that. I got a couple of 4 lap runs done with it still cutting in & out.
I was just about to bring it in & the thing lit up and headed straight over to the far side of the lake, & drove itself 5 meters up the bank at full noise. I had no control at all.
When I got there in the rescue dinghy it was upside down screaming like a banshee. Here's where the safety loop is a Godsend.
It looks like one of the water lines on the ESC came off & pumped a lot of water into the boat. Even though the ESC was sealed at the ends there was water in the ESC when I cut the shrink off.
There was a couple of little balls of molten solder stuck to the inside of the heatshrink too.
I gave the ESC a rinse in some methylated spirits & dried it out, but she's history. Not even a beep.
But then later when running the Spartan she pluttered a couple of times & I'm beginning to suspect that my trusty old Transmitter is developing a glitch. That's sad, because I've had it for 10 years & it controls all of my boats.
I have a spare TX, so I'll bind the receivers to that one & see if the cutting out/hesitating problem goes away.
Luckily there was no damage to the boat, not even the prop. All it did was to kick the rudder back. But it was covered in mud though.
She's all cleaned up & hanging back up on the wall of riggers until next time.
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