Yes lutach that guy is also using a very long wires but in an airoplane your much less likely to get spikes of back emf from the motor when you try to drive it in a direction that it was not intended.

I think the problem was a combination of using a motor that probably generates a lot of back emf (I doubt schulze test mega usa motors) and your wiring loom being so long add to that the fact your running through a eagletree device that probably adds quite a bit of inductance itself.

Needless to say if i were you running a big ass cap as close to your 18.61 as possible should help protect the esc from these transients that the mega is probably generating.

I would also say looking at the wiring you could easily reduce the length of your wires by half and still have slack.

The highest spikes from when the 18.97 failed was close to 75A. I'll see if the 18.61 can last long enough to give MGM time to fix all the bugs with their controllers. It would be strange if the 18.61 does last longer.

did you try the newer hacker controllers on higher cell counts?

I noticed that someone said they were using like 5s on the old hacker master controllers but a couple of years ago when i tried to run 3s lipo on my hacker master race if the voltage was over 12.3 ish it would not arm. I wonder if perhaps using a ubec would enable this controller to function on higher voltages.

I haven't tried my Hacker Master Race yet. I will wait for MGM to fix all the bugs. I might look into one of the new Schulze controllers that uses the D2PAK MOSFETs. My 40.160 is great and I'm sure the new controllers would be good as well. Who knows, maybe the guy who is doing my controllers would answer my e-mails and tell me they are done. I hope he doesn't run away with my MOSFETs.