I have read numerous reports of recent Castle HVs (last 6 months) burning for no reason. Very popular with heli fliers all over. I was going for the 120HV for the Logo 600 but went Kontronic due to numerous cautions not to go CC. Do some research yourself on your usual forums.
http://www.helifreak.com/showthread.php?t=319021
http://www.helifreak.com/showthread.php?t=314872
Edit:
Castle put this up on another forum.
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HV 120 modification offer
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 number is low. But for those unfortunate owners of one of the 3% that failure rate is still way too high.
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 solution 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 have just 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 seemingly complete solution to the matters plaguing that design.
We therefore are going to offer all who wish to return their HV120 for one that has this modification an opportunity to do so.
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.
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