Racing Drone Sets World Record

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rgMekanic

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The team behind the Drone Racing League just set a Guinness world record for the Fastest ground speed by a battery-powered remote-controlled quadcopter. The drone called RacerX achieved an average speed of 163.5 MPH, and a top speed of 179.g MPH. Weighing in at 1.76lb, it's quad motors spin at 46,000 RPM, there is no mention on how long its two 1300mah batteries last.

Insane. I have no idea how that could be controllable, and the headset the pilot was using looks absolutely tiny compared to what I see from commercial models like from DJI.

In order to set the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ achievement, the drone needed to fly back and forth across a measurement course of 100 m (328 ft.), with the official record set as the average of the top speed achieved on each of those flights. Therefore, the official speed measured for the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ title is 163.5 miles per hour.

Gury flew the drone along a field in the state of New York and clocked in at the record speed while a GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ adjudicator was on-site to verify the attempt. Earlier, prototypes of the drone burst into flames when hitting its highest point of acceleration due to the amount of power applied.
 
I don't care if it's old or not, that is impressive! I keep thinking I have to sell some of my RC cars and get into this drone racing stuff.
 
TAP said:
I don't care if it's old or not, that is impressive! I keep thinking I have to sell some of my RC cars and get into this drone racing stuff.
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<$400 can get you a pretty decent starter drone with some extra batteries and a basic FPV goggle setup.

Check out /r/multicopterbuilds for their wiki.
 
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They should work on sound canceling tech. These drones are loud
 
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Insane. I have no idea how that could be controllable, and the headset the pilot was using looks absolutely tiny compared to what I see from commercial models like from DJI.
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What's to control? It's not in the older day where RC copters were a PITA to fly. The autopilot can handle most of the details of the flying and if he's not trying to fly around objects at that speed, it wouldn't be all that difficult for a decent pilot. The record is for the engineering of it.

Galvin said:
They should work on sound canceling tech. These drones are loud
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Well, it's getting close to the sound barrier. Anything spinning at that speed is going to be loud. If my calcs are correct, the prop tips are at around 680mph (assuming 5" props at 46k RPM). Or Mach .89 depending altitude.
 
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I don't know that any racing drones use autopilot - this ain't a DJI Phantom or other stabilized camera platform we're talking about - they can be pretty twitchy and need to be for the maneuverability required. Granted there is a flight controller board with a stabilization gyro in it, but the pilot still flies it.

Here's a vid that shows a mix of speed and maneuverability from a fixed position rather than onboard. Towards the end he pulls off some stuff that looks like alien spacecraft stuff.

 
Nice. From reading about record-breaking fidget spinners earlier and now record-breaking drones, I'm pretty impressed by the current advancements of engineering and design.
 
danc3 said:
Nice. From reading about record-breaking fidget spinners earlier and now record-breaking drones, I'm pretty impressed by the current advancements of engineering and design.
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Can't tell if serious or....
 
Old. People fly turbine jet models much faster, and are controllable, why not a quad?
 
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