(See Chapter 31, Glossary for a definition of ESC)

If you plan to use a brushed motor, you will need a brushed motor ESC. If you plan to use a sensored brushless motor (like the X-250-4H) then you can use either a sensorless or sensored brushless motor controller. For the sensorless brushless motor controller, the sensor wires (connector) from the motor will not be connected to anything because the sensors are not required by the controller.

The sensored brushless motors may need to be sent back to the motor factory to reverse the motor direction if your rotor head is spinning in the wrong direction. Therefore, I recommend avoiding sensored brushless motors unless you already know the timing is for the desired direction of rotation.

If you plan to use a sensorless brushless motor, you will need a sensorless brushless motor controller. This motor type is not usable with a sensored brushless motor controller (such as the older Schulze Booster-40b).

An ESC used for main motor control must have the following characteristics are required (or must be programmable):

Most airplane ESCs are not suitable for helicopters because they have low throttle resolution, include a brake and have a fairly high low-voltage cutoff.

The JETI Micoprocessor (red label series) is not suitable for helis because the throttle control is not smooth and is rather "steppy". The Advance (blue label series) is supposedly better, but nobody I know has tried this. Some ESCs have an optocoupler (usually called OPTO) instead of a BEC. The optocoupler electrically isolates the ESC from the control signal which reduces the possibility of interference from the external BEC.

For the micro helis, the following are poular as main motor ESCs:

For the Corona, the following work:

For the ECO 8/16, the following work:

For the Logo 10, the following work:

Do not use the SMILE 40-6-18 in the Logo 10 - it tends to burn out!!!

The Hacker Masters seem to burn out in the Logo 10 as well due to ESD problems.

The Castle Creations Phoenix works fine in the Piccolos and the Corona but does not work well in the ECO 8/Logo 10 and larger helis. The current version of the firmware has a problem in three areas:

Therefore, the Phoenix is not suitable for larger helicopters until these firmware bugs are fixed.

If you are mounting the Phoenix ESC with double-stick tape, be sure to put the tape on the BEC side and not the FET side. The FET side generates the most heat, so it needs to be exposed to free air.

The FET side is the side with the regular pattern of identical chips. The BEC side has a random collection of chips. Do NOT use a switch between the battery and ESC. Most switches will not handle the current and will become very hot. Also, if the battery is plugged into the helicopter, you should consider it live for basic safety reasons anyway.