While doing research on tyres, I came across some interesting info regarding the current draw of servos. I decided to measure what my servo was actually drawing from the ESCs built in BEC. And that was a bit of an eye opener. The 20+KG digital servo was nothing like the servos I had used in my tourers in the past. Peaks of 7A under load were no exception. The little 2A BEC inside the ESC would never be able to survive for long under that kind of load. So I needed an external BEC.
I visited my local hobby shop and purchased a Castle Creations 10A CCBEC and a Y-cable to modify so I could hook it up without modifying the cabling of the ESC itself. When I got home, I couldn't believe my luck. There was an envelope from Castle Creations in my mailbox. The Castle Link USB programmer they offered for free with my motor/ESC combo had arrived. Great timing, because it couldn't just be used to program my ESC, it would work on the CCBEC too.
The installation was a pretty straightforward operation. First, I hooked up the CCBEC to my computer through the Castle Link to set it up. I set it to 6V as that's the limit of my servo. Next I made a Deans/T-connector pass through, and soldered it to the input wires of the CCBEC. And then, I cut the + on one end of the Y-cable. Hook that end up to the ESC. Hook the other end up to the output of the CCBEC and plug the remaining end into the RX. There was no way that RX, CCBEC and Y-cable, and of course all other required (and optional) cabling was goint to fit in the receiver box. So I modified an old battery storage box, mounted the CCBEC in that, and ziptied it to the right side plate. Not the cleanest installation, but it works and I was planning on cleaning up the cabling etc in the future anyway.
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