Luke Bell and his father Mike Bell from South Africa have set a world record for the fastest battery powered quadcopter. Their specially made drone reached a speed of 480.23 km/h. Book Guinness World Records confirmed the achievement as “the fastest speed achieved by a battery-operated remote control quadcopter”.

Luke describes the creation of the drone, named Peregrine 2, as his most difficult project. From the very beginning of the tests, the drone’s batteries faced problems: the high current heated the battery up to 130 ° C, which led to small fires. The motor lead also caught fire during full load testing. After 3D printing the final model and assembling all the parts, the first flight caused another fire.

This failure almost forced Luke to abandon the project, but he decided to redo all the parts and try again. After several months of trial and error, a successful flight was made, but it did not break the record. This meant even more improvements to the drone, including more powerful motors and other tweaks to achieve top speed.

The previous record belonged to the Dutch UAV manufacturer Dutch Drone Gods together with Red Bull. Their Red Bull Drone 1 reached a speed of over 350 km/h and was designed to accompany Max Verstappen’s Formula 1 car during the race. The shape and aerodynamics of the Peregrine 2 are markedly similar to the Red Bull Drone 1.