I'm very happy with my Ice Lite 50. I have Autorotation Bailout set up, which is working well, but has required some specific settings for Normal and Throttle Hold.

What bothers me is that the Soft Start is invoked instantly when it sees a 0% throttle signal. So if I am landing in Normal mode and drop the stick too far, touching 0% for an instant, I am definitely going to crash Or if I go to flip and I've forgotten to go into Idle Up, I'll touch 0%, and never spool up again in time to stay in the air.

Neither of those are Castle's fault, of course. But I have had other (cheaper) ESC's that required, say, 2 seconds of 0% before they would use the Soft Start again. I would definitely appreciate having that option.

I'm thinking I could maybe work around this by setting my Normal throttle curve to start at 19%, the same Throttle Hold % that's used for Autorotation Bailout. And use Throttle Cut (0%) to actually arm the ESC. But that sounds a bit risky, including maybe accidentally triggering the Autorotation spoolup speed, instead of Soft Start.

Could this delayed-Soft Start be implemented in a future firmware? Or am I over-thinking this, and it's not really needed?

If you use the governor mode and set normal mode to all 30 then you won;t have that problem.

I am using the governor. I'd thought about 30 across the board for Normal. But I like also being able to lower the stick to shut off the motor. Feels a bit safer, since with the stick down, and TH engaged, there are 2 things preventing the motor from starting.

The gov is actually part of what makes me nervous With my old ESC, and a Normal throttle curve, I'd also get an audible indication if I dropped the stick too far, as the motor would slow. Now, it's a constant RPM until suddenly, nothing, then back to soft start.

It's not a huge deal. But at least for my application, no downsides of a delayed soft-start come immediately to mind, but I can think of several advantages.

Well that is one reason why I just stick 0-0-0-0-0 in "normal" mode, and then never fly in Normal.

I guess I never saw the reason to have a lot of different idle -ups, especially with governor mode. Just pick the rpm you want and stick there. If you have an I2 then you can have another choice. On my Futaba, I have used set a different rpm, but to be honest never used it. If I liked it better, then I'd change the I1 value (in the transmitter) to point at the other rpm.

I guess my attitude is that just because the Phoenix Set Rpm lets you have 3 rpm choices, it doesn't mean you have to use them all, especially during the flight. You of course can always set the transmitter to another set value on the ground.

On all my Helis, even the ones without governors, I simply have a flat 0 curve in normal, and always fly in Idle1.

So when I land, when I touch down, I flip the TH switch. If you want to redundancy of safety, then switch to normal. That is a lot safer than relying on the collective stick to not come off the bottom.

This is just the way I do it, and of course, choose to do what you want!