BEC's

[Smoothound]

The latter are also generally more expensive but YMMV

[moyesboy]

When we all flew 35Mhz the receiver was very susceptable to RF noise and one of the ways it got into the receiver was from the BEC - particularly switching BECs. so a whole host of aftemarket BECs came in, the linear ones being less noisy, the switching ones often very noisy.
2.5Ghz radios are a god send for small electric helis becuase with 35mhz you could never get the components far enough apart to get really good range and glitches were commonplace.

with 3 cell lipos on 450 size helis the ESC bec is usually fine.
As the input volts goes up the job for the bec is more difficult, so usually with 5 and 6 cell setups a separate bec is used.

With a ESC bec i think it is a good idea to plug the minimum into it and give it a spin. This is becuase of the story above where a faulty ESC let the full power pack voltage into the receiver and servos and fried them. Try a test run with just the rx and ESC, then one servo, if all is fine then chances are the esc is fine. Most trex500 esc are problem free, just heard of a few infant failures.
Because model electrics are made down to a very low price its a problem for us that infant failures will occur. so its best to check everything as carefully as possible before flight, but also before plugging the more expensive components into the circuit.

[mark Taylor]

i'm using one of these in my trex 500
Western Robotics - BEC - 5/6 Volt High Current [WRL-HBEC-HC] - £45.95 : Real Raptors, Real Raptors
as i dont trust the align one after what happened to mattydreds
also i can now run my scorpion at 100% which is rated at 70 amp,
where as the align esc is only rated at 60 amp
hope this helps
cheers