I received my factory built 3DR Hexacopter a couple of weeks ago. I was working through the start-up checklist (installing radio receiver, calibrating the radios etc.) and when I got to Calibrating ESCs I was not having any luck. I read everything I could on the http://code.google.com/p/arducopter/wiki/ but was not getting anywhere.

After several days of trying different combinations of steps and actions I think that I finally got the ESCs calibrated by decreasing the throttle trim by about 50% and also moving the throttle from Max to Min very quickly (<1 second). 

Now, when I connect the flight battery pack, all six of the ESCs/Motors beep continuously and the motors “twitch”.  Then after about 30 seconds one of the six ESCs/Motors will stop beeping and its associated motor will stop twitching.  Then after about another 30 seconds a second ESC/Motor will stop beeping and its associated motor will stop twitching.  This pattern will continue until after about three minutes all six of the ESCs/Motors will have stopped beeping and the Motors will have stopped twitching.  Then I can ARM the APM and advance the throttle causing the motors to spool up.  I confirmed that moving the sticks on the transmitter cause the motors to change speeds so the next step was to see if it would fly.  I am happy to say that it does fly and seems to be quite stable. 

The ESC/Motor beeping and twitching issue still happens every time that I connect the flight battery pack but sometimes the timing and order that the motors “initialize” are different.  How can I fix this issue?  Is there any risk of flying the Hexacopter when it initializes like this?  Are there different (better) instructions that I should be following?