Largely unnoticed, an amateur 'space-race' to determine just how fast a quadcopter might be persuaded to travel; with the world record bouncing between places as far apart as China, Australia, Switzerland and South Africa.
It continues a trend toward the atomisation of technology, tools available online to anyone anywhere being used to advance science from within garages or kitchens.
This upends the effectively state-sponsored efforts of the 1930s when millions lined the banks of places like the Solent in order to watch record attempts by the likes of Supermarine. Now with electrical drones pushing the speeds of the fastest propeller driven types developed by this illustrious company, the difference is the millions are instigating progress sat at desks, instead of standing by and watching it play out.
What is interesting too is that the propellers are fixed blade, and not at all twisted to the extent they had to be in order to accommodate the high subsonic speeds a late-model Spitfire might experience: this the result of the extraordinary RPMs that electrical motors can sustain. Equally remarkable is the fact these quads can travel horizontally at all ~ the very shallowest angle of attack at such speeds meaning the body itself generates sufficient lift to be able to dispense with a conventional airfoil.
Inevitable then that they should eventually be used as a kinetic means of anti-drone warfare trialed in places as far apart as Finland and South Korea (where at a recent expo no less than eighty companies were offering such technology).
But can you guess which one?
Ed. It's the one in the middle. It closes its prey at a mere 350 km/hr, whereas that one at bottom right which currently holds the world record tops out at 650 km/hr.
