Recently I’ve decided to move over from Castle controllers to the new YGE range. One thing I was going to miss though was being able to set an exact RPM in the governor mode. I like to know exactly what RPM I am doing without having to tach the model. Many ESC’s have governor modes but you have to tach the model to know what it’s really doing.

That is if you’re using the internal governor facility. If you use an external governor like that built into the GY701 the problem is solved.

I’ve been running the GY701′s for about 9 months now but hadn’t been able to use the governor function as the gear ratio didn’t go down to 1:1.. and the easiest way to use an external governor on an electric model is with the sensor reading the main gear. Happily though at the end of last year Futaba updated the firmware to allow to go down to 1:1. Therefore with my new YGE 120HV in hand I ordered up a Futaba GV-1 sensor and magnet pack.. oh and the USB cable to update the GY701.

With everything fitted I ran through the calibration sequence and turned the governor mode OFF on the YGE itself. I set the GY701 to analogue servo and everything else as default.

On the transmitter I dialled in 1500rpm for hovering and 1975rpm for aerobatics. On the hover setting I enabled the slider on the side of the transmitter and set it to +/- 200rpm. This way I can tweak the RPM up and down in the hover if I want without upsetting the aerobatic RPM.

The first flight was a complete non-event. The machine came up to speed and settled to its target RPM nicely. Moving the slider up and down in flight proved the GY701 was governing properly. Off into the aerobatics and the machine ran smooth with no hunting or obvious over-speeding.

YGE + GY701.. will it work? Definitely yes!

Happy days.