this might be a dumb question but ive been flying for about two years now and i honestly just fix things when they break. never really had a routine for like checking screws or inspecting motors before they actually give me trouble. had a motor screw back out on me last weekend mid session and it made me think maybe i should be more proactive about this stuff.

i know some people do like a full inspection after every X number of packs but i dont really know what a reasonable interval looks like or what to actually check beyond the obvious stuff like props and obvious damage. like do you check your ESC solder joints visually every time? feel like that could get tedious pretty fast if you're flying a lot.

curious what other people actually do in practice vs what the youtube tutorials say you should do

honestly? i do a quick once-over before every session, mostly just looking at props, giving each motor a little spin by hand to feel for roughness, and checking nothing looks obviously wrong with the frame or wiring. takes maybe two minutes. then after any hard crash i do a more thorough thing where i check all the motor screws with a driver, look at the ESC and FC solder joints under a light, wiggle all the connectors.

the screw thing is real, loctite helps a lot but blue loctite not red, learned that the hard way when i had to heat a frame up to get screws out. i dont go crazy with it but a touch on the motor mount screws makes a big difference for how long they stay put.

i probably do way less than i should tbh. mostly just swap props when they chip and deal with stuff when something actually fails. havent had anything catastrophic yet but reading this thread is making me think i should at least check my motor screws more regularly. what loctite are you using, just the standard blue stuff from the hardware store?