You can find lots of designs of ESC's on rcgroups:

Here you can see some of them:
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=140454

More inspiration:
http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=165816.0

For some reason Atmega8/328 seems to be a very popular mcu for ESC's, also the ones you buy.
An example schematic
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1679621  

Thanks Coding Badly,
Yes I can see it now, I just didn't think about it before.
On my particular t13 it is off by 8,8%, although it is not a problem.

Maybe something like this:
http://microcontrollerprojects00.blogspot.dk/2012/04/usb-to-serial-converter-using-avr.html

Try this servo lib, it is made for the ATtiny85

http://www.cunningturtle.com/attiny4585-servo-library/

p.s: a blink for 40 seconds now gives me around 44secs (at over 5 Volts)
so it looks to me  like it actually runsaround 10% slower on (9.6mhz -0.96) = at around 8.4 Mhz instead of the promised 9.6
 is this normal?

The datasheet state the factory clock setting is within +-10%, so that is normal.

I was just playing with an ATtiny13 to see how close I could tune the osscillator, and it was quite easy to get within the +-2% mentioned in the datasheet by changing the OSCCAL value.
It is not very stable though, it jumps up and down.

One thing that surprised me:

Changing the OSCCAL dos not change the frequence of the 128 kHz internal Oscillator.

The voltage of a LiPo battery is a pretty good indicator of the discarge level.

For example:

If you measure 3,81V/cell the battery is half empty and at 3,7V you have a 25% left (and it is about time to recharge)

Remember don't discharge LiPo's too much, or they will be destroyed.

See:

http://www.rcuniverse.com/magazine/article_display.cfm?article_id=1183

Scroll down to

Gas Gauging LiPo Packs

I found this while looking for the same problem I have with my Frequence counter, but never got i used. It should protect the input from back powering
If you look at the rugged Arduino, he is using a zener diode and a 220 ohm PTC as overvoltage protection.
I was thinking of combining the two approaches
What do the experts say?
 

 VDD o------o----------.
            |          |
            |          |
           .-.         |
 To PIC    | | 10K     |
           | |         | G
           '-'         l
            |       =======
            |       +     +       Ext.
 Pxx o------o-------o     o----o  Signal
 I/O                |     |
                  S '->|--' D

                     BSS138 

I have a a stripboard 328 running 3,3V with 8Mhz x-tal.

What I do is:

When progamming (burning bootloader etc) I feed the stripboard Arduino with 5 volt, and then I can go back to using it in the intended 3,3V mode.

That way I don't need level-converters on the programming lines.
Remember the Atmega328 is only rated for VCC + 0,5 Volt on the pins.

So i guess a loopback test will fail?
I am using one of these, and i've seen others doing the same.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/CP2102-USB-2-0-to-UART-TTL-6PIN-Module-Serial-Converter-/130683943875?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e6d5ebbc3

Did you try a manual reset when uploading, or swapping the tx/rx lines

Do you have a link to the FT232RL module

I think the most important argument was the short time needed to speed up the wheel. If you could fly some minutes and recharge within some seconds, you would be flying much longer than with a battery with which you could fly for 20minutes but need 3hours to recharge.

With the battery that mauried mention you can charge with 10C, thats about 6 minutes.

With 2 batterys you can charge while flying, and keep going until forever

You have some unanswered questions, which makes it difficult to help:

What ATtiny  core are you using?

this one:
https://code.google.com/p/arduino-tiny/
or this
http://hlt.media.mit.edu/?p=1706
or a completely different core

Which arduino core 1.01 or newer/older?

How do you disable reset on your  UNO?

Which is the pin for PWM? I think only one is available

There are two, PB0 and PB1

can't we enter sleep mode via the toggle? watchdog?

I got the same idea, so i tryed it on an ATtiny85 and came up with this sketch
I use momentary button on PB3 and a LED on PB4.
When the led is off either by toggling the button or by the autoshutdown feature the current
consumption is  0.7 μA (if my DVM is to be trusted)

The autoshut-down time is determined by the variable autoDown=10000;

All the sleep codes are from a resent thread
http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,164146.0.html
and Jack Christensen's Million Ohms project.

Code:

// In sleep mode the consumption is 0,7 microA

#include <avr/sleep.h>
#include <avr/interrupt.h>

unsigned long autoDown=10000;
boolean ledState=false;
unsigned long mtime;
volatile boolean state = HIGH;

ISR(PCINT0_vect){
  state = !state;
}

void setup(){
  pinMode(4,OUTPUT);
  GIMSK=_BV(PCIE);  //Table 9.3.2
  PCMSK=_BV(PCINT3); //Table 9.3.4
  sei();    
  mtime=millis();
}


void loop() {

  digitalWrite(4, state);

  if(state==LOW){
    gotoSleep();
  }

  if(state==HIGH){
    digitalWrite(4, state);
    if((millis()-mtime)>=autoDown){
      state=LOW;
      digitalWrite(4, state);
      gotoSleep();
      mtime=millis();
    }

  }

}


void gotoSleep(){
  ACSR |= _BV(ACD);                         //disable the analog comparator
  ADCSRA &= ~_BV(ADEN);                     //disable ADC
  set_sleep_mode(SLEEP_MODE_PWR_DOWN);  // choose your preferred sleep mode for the chip
  sleep_enable(); // this puts the chip into, sleep mode, but doesn't command it to sleep yet.
  sleep_mode();  //  this command actually puts the chip to sleep.
}

Are you using servo.writeMicroseconds(uS)
That should give you about 1000 steps.

http://arduino.cc/en/Reference/ServoWriteMicroseconds