so this has been driving me insane for about two weeks now. one of my rear motors on my 5inch freestyle build just randomly cuts out for like half a second and then spins back up. happens maybe once every 3-4 flights and its totally unpredictable. sometimes low throttle, sometimes punching out of a dive.

ive already resoldered the motor leads to the ESC because one joint looked a little cold, swapped props, checked the bell for wobble, nothing obvious. betaflight blackbox shows a big RPM drop on M3 right before it happens but i cant tell if thats the ESC desync or the motor physically losing connection. the motor itself doesnt feel rough or gritty when i spin it by hand.

running a 45A 4in1 ESC stack, motors are around 2300kv. anybody had something similar where it wasnt an obvious solder problem?

had almost the exact same thing on a build last year. turned out to be a tiny strand of wire from the motor leads that was almost touching the ground pad, enough to cause intermittent noise on the signal line. wasnt shorting fully just kind of ghosting. pulled the motor leads through more carefully and heatshrunk everything and never happened again. worth checking under magnification if you havent already, those little copper whiskers are basically invisible normally.

could also just be a dying motor honestly. ive had motors that felt totally fine by hand but had a shorted winding that only showed up under load at certain RPMs. if you have a spare motor throw it on M3 and fly a few packs and see if the issue follows the ESC position or disappears. thats how i usually isolate whether its the motor or the ESC channel doing something weird. blackbox desync signatures can look similar either way so its hard to tell from the data alone.