Davey, I had a somewhat similar experience a short while ago. My MC, which had been extremely reliable , and has been raced for years started doing spontaneous circles during a mill lap. I replaced the servo thinking it got stuck. Second heat - same thing. Third heat replaced Rx (the same radio, my trusty Flysky ran my other boat perfectly for four heats of P-Ltd Hydro.) SAME thing. There went my points for the year in that class - bummer. After the race, during open water I replaced Rx again & used a Rx battery pack. (Yes I disarmed the ESC bec wire ). Ran, stuttered, ran, stuttered. Bringing it back in it went uncontrollably WFO into shore and impaled itself on a metal pit table. (see "Buffing out a small scratch" elsewhere here on the forum). After I repaired the hull I pulled the ESC. It was a very old (but previously extremely trusty) Turnigy 120 unit that had two extra caps and was shrink-wrapped (but not waterproofed, likely Corrosion-X'd ). Removing the shrink, there was the culprit ! After years of racing there was bits of melted insulation and close inspection yielded wires from the 3-wire harness that were un-romantically attempting to "mate" with the positive battery lead. While I can't say exactly what signal path these horny electrons took which resulted in a spastic servo AND an ESC stuck WFO I'm confidant that that in your case there's a good chance that some saltwater-inspired electrical mating ritual was responsible for the ills you describe. I ran in saltwater years ago behind my liveabord yacht and know the havoc that highly conductive saltwater can cause.
As an aside, I worked out on Point Loma (lived in OB) during the late 1960's when, as a military reservation, it was known as NEL (Naval Electronics Lab) and can tell you (in a general way since it was all hush-hush classified) that there's likely some REALLY INTENSE RF in them airwaves ! Plus of course the Sub base right below. And Coronado is close by plus NTC, MCRD, Miramar and even Camp Pendelton + other defense locations.
Insulate, isolate (Traxxas has a nice waterproof Rx holder BTW.)
2008 NAMBA P-Mono & P-Offshore Nat'l 2-Lap Record Holder; '15 P-Cat, P-Ltd Cat 2-Lap
2009/2010 NAMBA P-Sport Hydro Nat'l 2-Lap Record Holder, '13 SCSTA P-Ltd Cat High Points
'11 NAMBA [P-Ltd] : Mono, Offshore, OPC, Sport Hydro; '06 LSO, '12,'13,'14 P Ltd Cat /Mono
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