What does it take to build a drone capable of scaring the pants off anyone who has previously reported an EBE experience? Somewhere above R500,000, if the folks from Drone Pro Hub are to be believed. And, since they have much of it on video, it’s fairly believable.
It’s not about scaring folks who may have had an encounter, though seeing a home-made project zipping by in the skies at speeds of 600km/h could well do that. Like the early days of the steam engine, folks like Ben Biggs just want to see if they can do it.
The drone of progress
The ‘it’, in this case, is building the fastest human-operated drone possible. Turns out, as of mid-November 2025, that’s a home-built flying object that reaches speeds of 603km/h. DJI’s dinky little Neo 2, which was just released everywhere, manages a pokey 18km/h. A collision between the pair would probably result in a cloud of splintered carbon and motors.
According to the drone’s creators, the entire project took seventeen months to execute, from prototyping to actually flying the thing. You’ll catch the (unofficial) record-setting speed run from the craft’s perspective in the video above, which has at least one hilarious detail.
When ramping up to its eventual 167m/s top speed, the battery indicator craps out… pretty much immediately. That makes sense, since at those speeds it has a flight time of just two minutes. You could do a lot of damage with it in that time, assuming you’re using it as a ballistic projectile, but if you just gotta go fast, all that means is optimising time in the air for the next run.
The drone’s motors peak at 28,000 RPM, drawing 440 amps while at full stride. The effect might not seem especially remarkable from the FPV video footage captured of the run — the telemetry data may be more exciting for speed nerds — but if it crashed into a building, we have to assume it’ll punch a very large hole before stopping.
