I am in the process of putting together my first electric stunt ship.  I have seen, in other posts, mention of breaks in the ESC.  If you have this option is it best to have the break on or off?  Of course, it only kicks in on landing.  So is the extra drag good or bad?  I am guessing in a slimer the motor's compression gives you some braking.

    

John,
You really need to use an ESC with a brake feature, it will save you a lot of nick and dent repair. When I first started with electric the brake feature was not available in governor mode and I flew without one. This is ok except when the wind comes up. The spinning prop acts like a full disc sail. When you hit the wind it will stop the airplanes forward motion. When it happened to me I still have 2' of air under the plane, it just dropped out of the air. It didn't do bad damage just dings. Once Castle added the brake feature for the Control Line mode life became great. I set it for 100% with a 0.1 sec delay.

Best,          DennisT

In the FAI rules this is mandatory. I also flew without this when I first started in electric stunt, and like the guys stated, the free-wheeling prop really stops the model gliding and makes a decent landing much more difficult. The first Jeti Spin esc's disabled the brake on governor mode because this was only used for heli's at that time and they did not want any brake function on the rotor blades for obvious reasons. The FAI ruling was to prevent a programmed landing and the basic principle is that the prop blades should be clearly visible to the judges. If you use a soft brake for example, the prop can still spin slowly for a lap or so and this is o.k.

I found something interesting when I was flying at sea level while testing my Newtron. The batteries did not last a full flight and I had set the low voltage detector on the esc to 3.2 volts per cell. It shut down and the prop kept spinning i.e. no brake was enabled. This at least showed me that my governor timer was not the culprit. Anyway, enabling the brake function is a good idea.

Keith R

John,
Look a few posts up at the KR version 2 timer, this seems to be able to work with various ESC's and the "brake" is independent of the rpm control. It might be just the deal you need.

Best,       DennisT

Thanks Dennis.  I have the KR 2 timer and a Hobby King style speed controller.  Getting ready to fly my first Electric stunt.  To date my electric experience has been scale (Brodak's LA5 converted to electric).  With throttle control I always flew with brake off.  Per what I learned in this post I will turn it on for stunt.  I am reading that some set a brake delay.  My cheepy speed controller has brake ON-OFF but no delay.  Will be intersting how this all works.