Cheers Jamie, it is a help.

The ESCs are powering the receiver through a method which you inadvertently helped me with, just by chance, by reading an old post by yourself when I was having trouble when I first put it together. Connecting the two spare wires together on one of the controllers.

I suppose this answers your other suggestion already, but there is only one power supply in use. I have been lifting it up off the deck when inserting the link, I wasn't sure if that would be allowed in an arena setting but if thats all fine and it isn't a symptom of a greater problem then I could always just leave it.

As for the smoke, it hasn't done so since so it was possibly just a small piece of metal. Its also running at only half the recommended rating at the moment so I cant see it being overloaded, and as I said it has been working since. Hopefully just a one off thing.