You do make quite a lot of valid points Jes, but with the likes of bending the ESC wires 180 degrees, I cant see how it could possibly break or weaken any wires, is this not just a bit too much caution, as I am sure there are 100s if not 1000s of machines flying around today.
I do agree with where the wires come out of the CF holes from booms etc should probably be shielded, as a precauition but I'm sure again most people probably didn't do this.
I will be puttting liquid tape over my electrical connections, Im not sure if you had a bad solder if hot glue would help you much, but then again I don't know.
Putting something over the bullet connectors between the ESCs and the motors is a must, as the 3.5mm connectors aren't exactly the tightest of fits and I could see them working loose.
I have just bought a watt meter and a thrust meter to try and see exactly what sort of Amperage is being pulled (for my own benefit) just need to order up some more connectors to add it inline, will be interesting to see myself.
You can certainly bend a wire 180 degrees - it's not the angle that's important but the radius of that bend. Remember that everything on the craft will be subjected to vibration - one of the two "killers" of electrical systems (the other being heat). Vibration and heat have a nasty habit of unerringly finding the weak point and spoiling your day.
Mmmm... is "most people don't do it that way" a useful indicator? If you really don't what to fall out of the sky (as I certainly don't) then it's taking care of these little details that add up to a more reliable machine. Such fastidiousness is not of my own invention - look at how full-size aircraft are built and wired. There are stringent and strict rules about how to do things - based, for the most part, on long experience of "what causes crashes". Aircraft designers and service technicians will know the Minimum Bend Radius (MBR) for an particular wire and they
will stick to it. It would be "professional negligence" to skip cheap and simple techniques and procedures that could mean the difference between staying aloft and crashing catastrophically. Why we should we treat our flying machines any differently? Personally I don't subscribe to the "thousands of people..." line because many of them
do have crashes and rarely do they properly investigate the cause. "Oh, my ESC burned out" is usually blamed on cheap, Chinese quality or "just bad luck" whereas it is equally probable that their soldering was bad, an unsupported solder joint broke internally, a wire was bent too tightly or the insulation cut through where it rubbed against a CF edge, etc.
Not trying to force anything on you, but your questions have opened some interesting areas.
