Tricopter troubleshooting
Feeback from rcgroups suggested the bullet connectors could be a likely source of motor dropouts I was experiencing. I decided to re-solder the 3mm bullet connectors on the troublesome ESC and give it a whirl. Unfortunately on powering up, the motor still stuttered and wouldn't turn. Time to swap the ESC.
My spare ESC was in use in my eHawk 1500 which also happened to have different connectors (1.5mm bullet and JST). It was quicker to pull the heatshrink off both ESCs (the suspect and replacement ESC) and remove the wires at the PCB end rather than re-solder 6 bullet connectors, 1 JST and 1 XT60 connector. With all the swapping of motors and ESCs I've been doing to troubleshoot, I have a number of cable ties still not trimmed short. I've been using the releasable cable ties which I found to be pretty good. Picked them up from Officeworks.
Another test flight and it looks like it was the ESC after all. I've put two 2200mAh batteries through it and not once did the motor stop. Well not until I crashed it and broke the yaw mount.... again. I must find a better way to mount that motor. Or stop crashing.
Once I get the hardware sorted out I can move onto fine tuning it, then the Arduino controller, then maybe one day, mount the GoPro.
