Article By: Brandon Wilcox, Thomaston CT
December 4, 2007

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When it comes to power hungry applications, there are two segments of the hobby that come to mind; large airplanes, and rock crawlers. The larger airplanes require multiple servos that control different aspects of the plane like the rudder control and landing gear, while rock crawlers demand high torque motors and heavy-duty steering. In both of these applications where there is a large current draw on the receiver, glitching or even shutdown can occur. In either application, you don't want to add another battery to your setup, airplanes want to remain balanced and light to fly properly, and rock crawlers want to stay as light as possible to maintain a low COG. That is where the Castle Creations BEC comes in. What is a BEC? A BEC is a "battery eliminating circuit". It eliminates the need for a second battery to power the radio system and servos in a vehicle. Its lightweight, and can provide sustained high power to your receiver and servos from your main battery pack.

After receiving the BEC package from Castle Creations, I decided I would use the BEC in my super class rock crawler. Reason being its my heaviest rock crawler that uses 2 high torque motors, and 2 power hungry servos. Before installing the BEC in my truck, I immediately plugged the BEC into my Castle Link to program it for use. My Hitec 5998 servos are rated for 4.8 or 6 volts, so I set the BEC output voltage to 6 volts to get the most torque out of them. Because I use a Y harness on my truck, both servos will always be on and trying to center themselves, and when I steer, both servos are turning at the exact same time, a great test for this BEC. In the past, without using a BEC circuit the large amp draw shut down both my Spektrum receiver and my Team Associated receiver. They just need more juice.

Installing the BEC is very easy. All you have to do is connect the BEC to your ESC positive and negative wires. Some people use a Deans plug with 2 sides, but I just soldered it directly to the leads. The directions state you need to disconnect the red wire from the ESC to the throttle channel on your receiver if using the Castle BEC, but that step is not necessary if you always leave your ESC switch off. When you plug in your battery, everything will turn on, when you unplug it everything will shut off. I cut the on/off switch on the ESC so I would never turn it on by accident and fry the ESC. *Please note, when using a Castle Creations ESC, you must remove the red wire going from the ESC to the receiver like the directions state or the setup will not work properly.

After getting everything installed, I took off to New Milford CT to test out the truck on familiar ground. My batteries were freshly charged and I plugged in and started crawling. The steering felt strong right from the start. I started climbing over various obstacles. A couple times I got my rear wheels stuck in a little ditch, and when I tried to steer out the whole truck would sway left and right, instead of the servo not moving. The Castle BEC differently has tons of power, so I continued to crawl around and see if I could cause a glitch or shutdown. I couldn't do it. After going through 2 battery packs I didn't see 1 glitch or shutdown, but did notice that steering power went down as the main battery pack lost its punch. After seeing this I decided to switch to my lipo packs. I had a 2 cell lipo on me so I plugged that in and drove around for about 20 minutes. Not 1 glitch or shutdown at all, and the full power was there from start to finish. After 20 minutes I unplugged the lipo because the Tekin Rebel 2 ESC I was using didn't have lipo cutoff. The Castle BEC also doesn't have a lipo cutoff so make sure when your done wheeling for the day to unplug your battery, or your receiver and servos will still be draining power and could damage your lipo pack

Well, all in all the Castle BEC is awesome, and it did everything it was supposed to; provide consistent power to the receiver and servos without any hiccups. The castle BEC is super light, and had no effect on my rock crawlers center of gravity. Its also very small and mounted right on top of the stick chassis with just some simple zip ties. I would definitely recommend it to anyone. The one feature I would have liked to see in the BEC was a lipo cutoff, but as long as you unplug your battery when its dead you will be all set.

Where can you get a Castle Creations BEC? Directly from their web site: http://www.castlecreations.com/