Wonder, if with Dave's expertise and knowledge of the elecrtonickery, he only intended it to go forwards?
No, the ESC was recommended for the SLEC kit version and mention that the ESC is forward & reverse,
Just had a rummage in my workshop and actually found the program card but I never needed to use it as the defaults (including F/R) were OK. My radio for the model was a cheap Saturn 4ch set from Howes. It worked out of the box as i recall.
My later Swordsman kit has the same ESC and the radio is Specktrum TX and a generic 'Lemon' RX. Again no problems.
I use left stick for throttle and right stick for rudder.
It does suggest there may be something amiss with the ESC.
Colin
ps: Have you used the programming card to set everything back to the defaults? (black boxes on the instructions)?