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Getting back into rc for me feels like being put into a deep freeze for 25 years, then suddenly getting thawed and tossed onto the street and seeing flying cars and kids on hover boards.

As far as I knew, my Tekin 411 esc was so high tech and new, but at the time I knew that esc companies were developing esc tech very quickly.

I wasn't around for the brushed/NiCd Armageddon. Can anyone tell me what the very best esc's and batteries were, the ones the pros were using right before the D-Day invention of the brushless motor and lithium rc batteries? Like the peak of the old technology? When was D-Day for the brushed system?

The first ifmar off road worlds to use Brushless was in Japan in 2007 they were still using cells an in 6 cell nimh probably around 4600mah. It was a mix of old and new technology in motors Brushless v brushed, checkpoint was probably the best brushed motors at that time and Novak brushless was the best at that point soon to be followed by LRP, the early brushless motors and speed controls had a real problem with overheating and thermaling? (shutting itself down). Lipo batteries would have been around 2009/2010 from a race point of view as before hard case lipos there were soft case ones but you weren't allowed to use these at races at least over here in Australia but as we go by ifmar rules I am sure it was the same elsewhere.

So to answer your ??? 2007 Checkpoint or Orion/Peak motors but of course Reedy were still going and for batteries from memory Interlect IB 4600 and I think a brand called GP and they had a 4600 or 4700mah cell and these were all matched by the same companies that sold the motors.

As soon as brushless and lipos started to get reliable nobody looked back as everything was now so much cheaper and easier and most importantly faster.

Peter

Awesome info thanks! I didn't know it's been so long already since the tides turned on electronics. I'm thinking of trying to buy the "latest and greatest" winning old style system with esc, brushed motor, and battery.

Midway through the B4/T4 run was when the change happened, so if you look at early B4 literature you'll see what LRP/Reedy had to offer.

V brush motors such as the Peak Vantage were the last "Big Thing" to happen in brushed motors although it didnt last long at all. It took a little while for lipo's to catch on but it seemed like every week a higher capacity NiMh came on the market, which they seemed to get more and more unstable as a result. After lipo's took over NiMh went to crap and good luch finding any quality cells now.

As for escs, it was stuff like the LRP Quantums and KO VFS series at the end. The revitalized Tekin brought back the
G10, which was big but very good. Keyence kind of popped up in some circles as well, especially oval.

To me, one of the latest and pretty good brushed esc is the Novak GT7.

Yep loved Novak, orange was iconic.

GT7 & GTS were good but didn't think they were that much better than preceding Cyclone & Atom. They were bigger too.

To a kid geek... plugging a Cyclone into your Pit Wizard (PC, handheld or MilleniumPro) to program it was the height of RC geekdom.

Cyclone was the pinnacle of Novak in my opinion