Recently I have been noticing slices in the heat shrink around my ESCs, and it's not just one ESC, all of them seem to have been hit in some way. My ZMR250 has the ESCs mounted on the arms which is great for active cooling, but puts them in danger of prop strikes. I figure the problem is that when a prop breaks it either flies with it's momentum into the ESC, or the prop fractures half way through so that it's bent down enough to hit the ESC where it fully detaches itself. I know it can't be a full speed hit because the slices do no go all the way through the heat shrink.
I put it on the back of my mind to provide these ESCs some more protection, but today finally made me take action. I hit a tree going medium speed and fell down into some long grass. I was thinking a prop probably broke on the tree and hoping the grass saved the rest. I was right, there was only one broken prop, but there was also something worse. The power lead to one of my ESCs had completely sheared off. Back home doing some micro surgery I thankfully discovered that the pad was not ripped off and was able to solder the lead and capacitor back on. I could not reshrink that part of the ESC so I added some hot glue and used some new found Friction Tape to seal it off. While I was at it I decided to take some tape and use it to secure the ESCs to the arms instead of zip ties. The tape seems to hold up to prop strikes on my power leads so far so I will give it a shot at protecting the ESCs.
So basically this post is to ask you guys if you experience prop strikes with arm mounted ESCs, and what you do to avoid damaging them, or if that's just part of miniquad flying. Let me know. Thanks!
Cutting some shrink away to reveal the ripped off lead.
One of the other ESCs that have been hit.
The power lead that has taken dozens of hits by rogue blades.
ESCs after wrapping them to the arms with some friction tape.
Bonus: The crash could have ended much worse. Here is how the battery was positioned when I found it: https://instagram.com/p/5nRlifyu1g/
I put it on the back of my mind to provide these ESCs some more protection, but today finally made me take action. I hit a tree going medium speed and fell down into some long grass. I was thinking a prop probably broke on the tree and hoping the grass saved the rest. I was right, there was only one broken prop, but there was also something worse. The power lead to one of my ESCs had completely sheared off. Back home doing some micro surgery I thankfully discovered that the pad was not ripped off and was able to solder the lead and capacitor back on. I could not reshrink that part of the ESC so I added some hot glue and used some new found Friction Tape to seal it off. While I was at it I decided to take some tape and use it to secure the ESCs to the arms instead of zip ties. The tape seems to hold up to prop strikes on my power leads so far so I will give it a shot at protecting the ESCs.
So basically this post is to ask you guys if you experience prop strikes with arm mounted ESCs, and what you do to avoid damaging them, or if that's just part of miniquad flying. Let me know. Thanks!

Cutting some shrink away to reveal the ripped off lead.

One of the other ESCs that have been hit.

The power lead that has taken dozens of hits by rogue blades.

ESCs after wrapping them to the arms with some friction tape.
Bonus: The crash could have ended much worse. Here is how the battery was positioned when I found it: https://instagram.com/p/5nRlifyu1g/