The New Novak Rooster Bashing with the New Bird

The New Novak Rooster
Bashing with the New Bird - The Bird is Back
by Tony Arnold - StampedeProject.com
as Published in RC Car Magazine

Funny how life seems to repeat itself and occasionally its for the better. An example is my old favorite Novak Rooster ESC - AKA "The Chicken". This time around the new Rooster has been completely updated with features we always wanted. Like before, the Rooster offers the basher and beginning racer and extremely flexible, powerful, and easy-to-use entry-level reversible sport ESCs at a competitive price. For comparison, my old abuse tolerant vintage Rooster (yes its still kicking) is tasked to see how the new chicken in town stacked up - let's go bashing with the birds.

What's new? For starters the completely redesigned Rooster is now 12-Turn rated (6-cells), rated up to 400 Amps (Fwd), has much lower resistance, user friendly direct soldering tabs and &harness, larger 14-gauge power wires, high power 6V/1.5Amp BEC output, built in 6V power output for a fan, and my personal new favorite feature - its also water resistant. In addition to the huge power bump and now being able to run amuck in wet conditions, the big surprise was a built in 6.25V Lipo cutoff circuit - pretty impressive for a sport level ESC at this price. The voltage input has been expanded with a lower 4-cell limit up to its previous 7-cells top end.With the exception of the brake light output, all the favorite features remain including one touch setup, FWD/BRK/REV and FWD/BRK profiles (for both regular and Lipo cutoff setups), and radio priority.

In testing, the old Rooster didn't stand a chance with the new Rooster kicking out over four times the posted power of the vintage model. The diminutive 1.54" x 1.18" footprint will fit much better into a broader range of R/C's than the old large blocky Rooster at nearly twice the size. Just like the original wheelie'ing Rooster, the new Chicken didn't disappoint with even more off the line power. Testing with a variety of bashing and racing 12T-17T motors delivered performance in line with the ESC's specs and the new Smart Brake II slowed things down with plenty of control. Like the welcomed addition of a fan on my old Rooster, the new Rooster's convenient built in fan output is likely to be handy as it gets flogged when running long and hard at its turn and voltage limits. Although this new Rooster has more power than even the original Super Rooster, I should have been a true 12-turn rated ESC for its 7-cell max but 8-cells would have been preferred.

CONCLUSION
I would trade the old for the new in a second. What's not to love in an easy-to-use, competitively priced reversible sport level ESC with coup ruling power, smaller size, great Novak service, and even LiPo cutoff. Although not Novak's bottom of the ESC line, the Rooster delivers a competitive offer that makes it one of the top reversible sport ESCs available all in a water-resistant design. I think Novak may have a hit again, after all everyone loves chicken.

SPECS Type: Reversible Sport ESC $90 Retail
Rivals: Competition: Tekin B1R, Associated LRP Pro, DuraTrax IntelliSpeed, Futaba MC330CR, Traxxas XL-10
SOURCES: Novak www.TeamNovak.com

Specs
User Replaceable Input Harness
Polar Drive Circuitry
Thermal Overload Protection
Forward/Reverse: FWD & REV
Input Voltage: 4-7 Ni-Cd/Ni-MH cells (1.2V/cell) or 2 Li-Poly cells
Footprint: 1.54” x 1.18”
Weight: 2.66 oz. w/wires; 1.57 oz. w/o wires
On-Resistance: 0.0014 ohms (FWD); 0.0028 ohms (REV)*
Rated Current: 400 amps* (FWD)
Braking Current: 200 amps*
BEC: 6.0 volt/1.5 amp
Discrete Steps: 256 FWD; 256 REV
Smart Braking II

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THE FINAL CALL
Highs - Built in Lipo Cutoff and fan output, higher power, and water resistant case.
Lows - Should have been 12-turn rated for 7-cells not just 6-cells. A true 8-cell limit would have made this a slam dunk ESC for the basher.