Ben Biggs Hits 690 Km/h In Unofficial Drone Speed Run, Reclaims Title From Luke Maximo Bell
Photo credit: Benjamin Biggs and the Drone Pro Hub team.
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Australian aerospace engineer Benjamin Biggs and the Drone Pro Hub team are back. Weeks after Luke Maximo Bell reclaimed the Guinness World Record for fastest drone with his Peregreen V4 at 657.59 km/h (408.6 mph), Biggs took his upgraded Blackbird to the Australian outback and hit a peak GPS speed of 690 km/h (428.8 mph) on his second run. His estimated 100-meter average comes in around 661 km/h (410.7 mph), roughly 3 km/h faster than Bell’s official record.
There is a catch. This was an unofficial attempt. Biggs followed Guinness World Records guidelines but could not secure the required professional drone pilot witnesses on a Thursday morning in rural Australia. The speed is real. The record status is not.
Biggs used the motors Luke Bell rejected
The most interesting engineering detail from this attempt is the motor choice. Biggs is running AAX 2826 Competition motors, custom wound by AAX with extra-long leads that feed directly through the arms and solder straight to the speed controllers. No additional wiring. No unnecessary weight. The arms stay as thin as possible.
These are the same family of motors Bell tested for his Peregreen V4 build. In that comparison, Bell bench-tested the AOS Supernova 3220, AMX 2826, and T-Motor 3120 side by side. The AMX 2826 was one of the three options Bell ultimately passed on, choosing the T-Motor 3120 for its thermal stability and lower wear after repeated high-speed passes. Biggs went the other direction. He asked AAX for higher KV windings, accepting the trade-off of potentially more heat for more raw RPM at the top end.
The gamble paid off. His motors peaked at 34,000 RPM during the 690 km/h pass and came back warm, not burning hot. Bottom motors still ran hotter than the top pair, a recurring pattern in puller-configuration speed drones where the lower motors ingest turbulent air from the frame.
Two runs, two very different speeds
Biggs completed two full-throttle passes during the session. The first run hit a peak GPS speed of 635 km/h (394.6 mph). Good, but not enough to beat Bell’s 658 km/h record. The acceleration was noticeably slower than previous attempts, a side effect of the shorter, chopped propellers that trade low-speed thrust for high-speed efficiency.
The second run was different. Biggs held the throttle open longer, and the drone kept climbing through 600, 670, 680, and eventually 690 km/h. His quick math afterward tells the story: 635 plus 690 averaged to 662.5 km/h peak. Factor in the typical 1 to 2 km/h reduction when calculating the 100-meter average, and he landed on an estimated 661 km/h. That is 3 km/h over Bell’s Guinness-verified number.
“It’s a bit cheeky, but what can you do? If that’s the top speed, that’s the top speed. I can’t change it,” Biggs said after crunching the numbers trackside.
The battery and power system behind 690 km/h
Biggs runs a dual-battery setup that separates him from most speed record competitors. Two SMC 7S 600 mAh packs wired in series give him a total of 14S. Running 14S instead of the more common 12S configuration gives a higher voltage ceiling, which means the motors can produce equivalent power at lower current draw. Lower current means less heat, and heat is what kills speed drones.
For this attempt, the batteries were overcharged to 4.35 volts per cell instead of the standard 4.2V. That extra 0.15V per cell, multiplied across 14 cells, gives the motors meaningfully more voltage under load at full throttle. The trade-off is reduced battery lifespan, but when you are building a machine for a handful of passes, longevity is not the priority.
The telemetry from the second run tells the rest of the story. At peak speed, the batteries were holding 3.2 volts per cell under load. By the end of the pass, they had sagged to 3.1V per cell. Motor temperature hit 76 degrees Celsius. Even after that 690 km/h pass, the batteries still had 8% remaining. After the first, gentler 635 km/h run, battery temperatures sat around 70 degrees Celsius, and the motors were warm but not hot to the touch.
The puller configuration gets a flip
Biggs runs a puller configuration with motors mounted at the front of the arms instead of the rear. This gives the propellers clean, undisturbed air to work with, which improves efficiency at extreme speeds where even small aerodynamic losses compound rapidly.
For this run, he made one significant change from previous attempts: he flipped the entire drone’s orientation. He remounted the camera, repositioned the GPS module to the top, and reversed the layout so that the aerodynamic vent now sits on top of the airframe. The theory is that placing the drag point on top instead of the bottom causes the drone to pitch up naturally under load, which helps all four motors spin at a more consistent speed rather than having the bottom pair work harder to compensate for downward pitching forces.
Whether this change directly contributed to the 690 km/h peak is hard to isolate from the motor and battery upgrades, but Biggs said the drone sounded different during the pass. It did not sound like it was working as hard as it normally does at those speeds.
The fastest drone speed record timeline keeps accelerating
The record has changed hands five times since early 2024. Here is the full progression:
| Date | Record Holder | Drone | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|
| April 2024 | Luke & Mike Bell | Peregreen 2 | 480.23 km/h (298 mph) |
| April 2025 | Samuele Gobbi | Custom build | 557.64 km/h (346.5 mph) |
| June 2025 | Luke & Mike Bell | Peregreen 3 | 585 km/h (363.5 mph) |
| Dec 8, 2025 | Benjamin Biggs | Blackbird | 626.42 km/h (389 mph) |
| Dec 11, 2025 | Luke & Mike Bell | Peregreen V4 | 657.59 km/h (408.6 mph) |
| 2026 (unofficial) | Benjamin Biggs | Blackbird (upgraded) | ~661 km/h (410.7 mph)* |
*Estimated 100-meter average based on Biggs’ own calculations from peak GPS speeds. Unofficial attempt, not Guinness-verified.
In less than two years, the record has gone from 298 mph to over 410 mph. That is a 37% speed increase driven entirely by independent builders working out of workshops and garages, not corporate R&D labs. We first covered Drone Pro Hub’s 603 km/h unofficial run back in November 2025, and we covered Luke Bell’s Peregreen V3 comeback build the month before that. The original Peregreen 2 record from 2024 feels like ancient history now.
Unofficial status leaves the door open
Biggs was upfront about the limitations. He wanted this to be an official Guinness attempt, but getting professional drone pilots to a remote Australian location on a Thursday morning proved impossible on short notice. He followed all the Guinness measurement guidelines (GPS telemetry, two runs in opposite directions, averaging peak speeds), but without the required witnesses and adjudication, the result cannot be submitted as an official record.
That means Luke Maximo Bell’s 657.59 km/h from December 11, 2025, remains the official Guinness World Record for fastest ground speed by a battery-powered RC quadcopter. But everyone involved knows the Blackbird is faster now. The question is whether Biggs can replicate these numbers on an official attempt day, or whether Bell has another iteration already in the works.
DroneXL’s Take
The 700 km/h barrier is not theoretical anymore. It is an engineering problem with a visible solution. Biggs hit 690 on his second run and still had battery headroom. His motors were warm, not cooked. The airframe held together. None of those things were guaranteed at these speeds even six months ago.
What I find most telling about this rivalry is the motor story. Bell tested the AAX/AMX 2826 motors for Peregreen V4, measured their performance on a thrust rig, and chose T-Motor 3120 instead because reliability mattered more than peak thrust for a Guinness attempt where you need four clean passes. Biggs took those same AAX 2826 motors, had them custom wound to a higher KV, and pulled 690 km/h out of them. Both decisions were smart for their respective goals. Bell needed repeatable, witnessed performance. Biggs needed a single monster pass to prove the speed was there.
Biggs has publicly stated that 700 km/h is his next target. Based on what I am seeing in this run, he is about 10 km/h of headroom away from getting there with this exact build. That means the next official Guinness attempt from either builder will likely be north of 670 km/h average, possibly cracking 700 km/h peak. I would expect an official attempt from one or both teams within the next three months.
The speed record race between Australia and South Africa has done more to push the limits of multirotor engineering than any commercial product cycle in the last decade. These are garage-built machines approaching 56% of the speed of sound at sea level, with propeller tips likely going supersonic at 34,000 RPM. The fact that this is happening with off-the-shelf lithium batteries and 3D-printed frames is the real story.
You can watch the full video of Benjamin Biggs’ 690 km/h attempt on the Drone Pro Hub YouTube channel.
Editorial Note: This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of AI to ensure technical accuracy and archive retrieval. All insights, industry analysis, and perspectives were provided exclusively by Haye Kesteloo and our other DroneXL authors, editors, and YouTube partners to ensure the “Human-First” perspective our readers expect.