Drone Flies 3.5 Hours on Single Charge, Smashes Record

Most engineers choose between speed and endurance when building drones. Luke and Mike Bell decided to master both.

The South African duo just set an unofficial world record for the longest hovering flight by a battery-powered multirotor drone: 3 hours, 31 minutes, and 6 seconds of continuous stationary flight. The previous record stood at 3 hours and 12 minutes.

What makes this achievement even more impressive is how much power remained. At 2 hours and 14 minutes, Luke Bell still had 33% battery left. He hadn't expected to fly anywhere near that long, which is why he didn't apply for official Guinness certification beforehand.

The engineering strategy boiled down to one obsessive principle: eliminate wasted energy everywhere. Luke started with massive 40-inch carbon-fiber propellers that generate lift at far lower rotations than smaller blades. Slower spinning means dramatically less power consumption.

He ran five rounds of computer simulations just to determine the perfect arm length (31.5 inches) that would minimize how each propeller's airflow disrupted the others. He even optimized the 36 feet of motor wiring to find the exact gauge that balanced electrical resistance against added weight.

The biggest breakthrough came from the batteries. Luke used semi-solid state cells with double the energy density of conventional drone batteries (320 Wh/kg versus 160 Wh/kg). He even stripped the protective packaging from each battery pack to save 12.7 ounces, roughly equal to the weight of the entire carbon-fiber frame.

The result: the drone consumed just 400 watts while hovering. In slow forward flight, that dropped to 250 watts, a 37.5% reduction that hints at even longer flight times ahead.

Why This Inspires

The Bell team isn't stopping with endurance records. They also hold the Guinness record for the fastest RC drone at 408 mph, set in January 2026. They've already increased their speed from 300 mph in May 2024 to over 400 mph in less than two years.

Mike Bell remains realistic about the limits of battery technology. Aviation fuel carries 50 times more energy than the best batteries available today, he notes. But that hasn't stopped the duo from pushing boundaries in both directions, proving that choosing between speed and endurance might just be a false choice.

Their next speed drone, the Peregreen V5, aims for 450 to 465 mph.

Every incremental improvement in efficiency and performance brings electric flight closer to practical applications, from delivery drones to emergency response systems.