On: Bug drone for UK army that weights 196g, has 40 mi...

[bowmessage]

Don't a lot of the DJI models have a ~30 minute flight time? Point taken though, that there's a wall we hit with current battery tech.

[extropy → bowmessage]

The DJI drones that can do that are significantly larger. A 250 gram DJI mavic mini can do 30 minutes and with significantly larger propellers.

The efficiency goes down with smaller blade sizes (more losses to vortexes) so from the photo 20 min is the max to expect with regular lipo batteries.

[Tepix → extropy]

The Mini 2 manages 31 minutes at 249g and it features a 3 axis gimbal for the camera. This military drone doesn't appear to have any gimbal.

[snovv_crash → extropy]

41 minutes of spirited flying with hobby components weighing under 250g:

https://youtu.be/u2v1QLmhNxM

[semi-extrinsic → extropy]

Nitpick: plural of vortex should be vortices.

It actually appears both spellings are currently accepted in dictionaries, but in the fluid dynamics literature you will essentially only find "vortices", so that's a much better (more searchable) word to use.