• Although not a typical focus of people who fly quadcopter drones for a hobby or living, endurance flying has a certain appeal to it for the challenge it offers. • Thus, as part of his efforts to collect all the world records pertaining to quadcopter drones, [Luke Maximo Bell]has been working on a designthat would allow him to beat the record set by SiFly Aviation at 3 hours and 11 minutes. • By using knowledge gained from hisPV solar-poweredquadcopter, [Luke] set about to take it all a few steps further. • The goal was to get as much performance out of a single Watt, which requires careful balancing of weight, power output and many other parameters. • Crucial is that power usage goes up drastically when you increase the RPM of the propellers, ergo massive 40″ propellers were picked to minimize the required RPM to achieve sufficient lift, necessitating a very large, but lightweight frame. • The battery packs are another major factor since they make up so much of the weight.
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