Luke Maximo Bell, a South African engineer known for building custom endurance drones, flew a quadcopter for 3 hours, 31 minutes, and 6 seconds on a single charge. That flight was reported in February 2026. It broke the prior small-electric-multirotor endurance record of 3 hours 11 minutes, held by SiFly’s Q12. His build used T-Motor’s “Antigravity” MN105 V2 motors, not the unrelated Insta360-backed drone company of the same name.
What actually made this flight possible?
Bell’s quadcopter used a carbon-fiber X-frame and 18-inch T-Motor carbon propellers. It paired those with T-Motor’s Antigravity-series MN105 V2 motors, running at 90KV. That combination is built for efficiency over raw speed, which is what long-duration flight actually requires. He’s also built a separate solar-powered, battery-free drone using 27 solar panels producing about 150 watts combined.
Wait, is “Antigravity” a drone company?
There are two separate things sharing the name, and they aren’t related. T-Motor’s Antigravity motor line is what Bell used in his record flight. Separately, Antigravity is a consumer drone company, a subsidiary of Insta360 founded by JK Liu. It launched the Antigravity A1, an 8K 360-degree FPV-style camera drone, in mid-2025.
Why does an endurance record like this matter?
Records like this push component makers to improve motor and battery efficiency. That efficiency eventually filters down into commercial and enterprise drones. A multirotor flying for three and a half hours on one charge is well beyond what most consumer or even enterprise drones can do today.
Sources: DroneXL, Antigravity.
