I've been using the Castle Phoenix 80's since Ray Fuller had the first batch ready from Castle.
I've been tired of paying the enormous amounts of money for the Schulze controllers only to have them fry at the slightest misuse.
I now have 9 castle controllers and am completely satisfied with them. Not only do the 7 different programming parameters make them more flexible than the Schulze controllers but they are also close to half the cost of the old Schulze 105 controllers.
In addtion to cheaper cost and ease of programming, the service provided by Castle Creations is second to none. I've had at least 5 Schulze controllers sent back to Germany for repair. $80 for shipping plus whatever Schulze charged for the repair.
Castle usually repairs or replaces their controllers for little or no cost plus the turn around time is usually within 1 or 2 days since they're located in Kansas. At the extreme side, you can totally destroy your Castle controller and they will replace it for $50.00. Did I mention I really like their service?
As far as performance goes about the only element that I wish they had was water cooling (I have heard that this may be coming from them) I ran an 8 cell sport hydro class at the Batavia race this past summer with a Castle controller. In one particular heat at about the 3rd lap I felt I had the race won so I backed off to approx half throttle. The nature of esc's is that they will generate more heat when running at partial throttle than wide open. At the last turn before the finish line my boat stopped. After inspection, one of the leads on the Castle esc had came unsoldered. I resoldered the lead back on and it was good to go. I think if the controller had been water cooled this may not have happened. Adding water cooling would be an easy mod to perform yourself but a factory solution would be nice.
Some people have had some issues with arming the controllers upon startup. I'm using all Futuba gear (3PJS transmitter) and haven't had any of the arming problems that have been mentioned.
I have also ran these controllers in several P sport hydro hulls. My setups were Hacker motors - usually 7 or 8 XL's running 12 GP3300's or 12 2600's. I'm not using water cooling on the motor or controller and as long as I run wide open most of the time I haven't had any issues with the controller at this level of amp draw.
I hope this helps.
Dan Proulx
