What just happened? The drone speed record has just been broken again – albeit unofficially. Ben Biggs and Aidan Kelly have reclaimed the crown from a father and son team by pushing their drone to an incredible 453 mph, beating the previous official record by around 45 mph.
The Blackbird, built by the Drone Pro Hub duo, hit 730 km/h, or about 453.6 mph, during a downwind run on the second day of testing. Its return leg into heavy wind topped out at 640 km/h, giving the pair a two-way average of 685 km/h, or about 425.6 mph.
That is comfortably ahead of the 657.59 km/h (408.60 mph) Guinness World Record set by Luke and Mike Bell. The caveat is that Biggs and Kelly's attempt has not been certified by Guinness.
One of the biggest changes to Blackbird was its new set of handmade carbon fiber propellers. These replaced the APC 7x15 props used in earlier runs and feature a much higher pitch, though the exact number is being kept secret.
The blades also have a sawtooth leading edge, designed to keep airflow moving straight over the blade rather than spilling sideways and reducing efficiency. It's a little tweak, but at more than 400 mph, small aerodynamic gains make a huge difference.
Testing wasn't exactly smooth. On the first day, Blackbird reached around 630 km/h before Biggs lost the video feed. The team blamed a possible mix of antenna geometry, Doppler shift affecting the digital video link, and signal overload as the drone screamed past the pilot. The drone was written off as lost before the landowner later found what was left of it.
The second day was better, though only just. With one Blackbird left, winds gusting as high as 60 km/h (37.2 mph), and rain approaching, the surviving drone finally broke through the 700 km/h (435 mph) barrier.
The batteries reportedly hit around 80 degrees Celsius, heat shrink began melting, and the craft pulled roughly 400 amps for about 10 seconds. The upwind run drained the packs so badly that the drone came down smoking, but it survived more or less intact.
We've been following the rapidly changing drone speed record for a while. In October, we covered two very different high-speed FPV projects: an open-source, X-Wing-style 3D-printed drone that reached 152 mph, and Luke and Mike Bell's Peregreen 3, which hit an unofficial 363 mph. The Bells had previously set a 298 mph Guinness record with Peregreen 2, only for Samgo's Fastboy 2 to push the mark to 346 mph. Biggs and Kelly then took the official record with Blackbird, averaging 389 mph and reaching 407 mph downwind, before the Bells reclaimed the crown with Peregreen V4's 408 mph average. If Blackbird can repeat this latest feat under Guinness conditions, the title will change hands again.