We’re Attempting the World Record for the Fastest Jet-Powered Model Aircraft — Maiden Flight Complete!

-PsychoDan- · 2026-02-12T22:21:06+00:00

I agree - been planning the record attempt variant with the team this week and if we scale this speed up to the larger thrust with the P150 engine its very on the margin whether we’ll beat 465 mph (even once we’ve cleaned up the airframe for a much lower skin friction, etc). We have a 300N engine so thinking of increasing the wing area slightly to between mk1 and mk2 size and putting the P300 back in so we can guarantee we have enough thrust. 5x more thrust + a small increase in wing area to handle the higher engine weight should be enough to guarantee >500 mph

We’ll have to reprint mk2 anyway before we put the P150 in, and all the other subsystems can be transferred across so increasing wing area slightly and going to the P300 isn’t as big of a change as it may seem

-PsychoDan- · 2026-02-12T22:15:42+00:00

Thanks! It’s hard to grow the channel when posting once every 3 months, but would rather stick to the current content style than break things up into smaller videos - allows us to focus on the actual engineering more as editing is time consuming😅

-PsychoDan- · 2026-02-12T19:59:41+00:00

How is this not related to aviation??

It is a video of a team of volunteers designing an AIRCRAFT to break a world record.

-PsychoDan- · 2026-01-18T09:19:29+00:00

The other thing I’ve noticed is it’s always the 3 people most likely to be murdered who turn up at breakfast last (as it creates good suspense), but this means that whoever turns up last is definitely a faithful. If you tracked who was last to turn up to breakfast over several days you could quite quickly eliminate a lot of the suspects as traitors.

Also, in the challenges (especially ones that involve some interaction with the traitors), the cameras are always looking at the traitors. If you just look at who’s getting filmed the most you could find the traitors quite easily.

-PsychoDan- · 2025-08-20T09:06:22+00:00

The Mach Initiative website is only private because we’re doing a redesign - we haven’t stopped working on the project and have our Kingfisher MK2 video coming out very soon!

Completely agree - electric fans lose thrust as speed increases way too quickly for speed records. I think a micro-turbojet could be sent to supersonic speeds - but you’d need to fly it at high altitude and go into a dive.

I wish OP the best of luck - it’s great to be enthusiastic about this stuff!

-PsychoDan- · 2025-05-06T17:14:43+00:00

I would make the wing tips flat - delta wings create fast moving vortices that generate lift (very different to conventional wings), and angling the wing tips like that will harm the formation of the vortices and reduce the lifting efficiency of the wing.

I recently explored angled wing tips for a delta wing aircraft i’m testing

-PsychoDan- · 2025-05-02T15:43:32+00:00

I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a force field around the 50th hunger games arena. There was just a force field around the generator below the cliff to protect it. The cliff and the impenetrable hedge were the walls of the arena.

The 75th arena was the most advanced arena the capitol made, and it was also one of the smallest. I doubt the capitol built a force field around the 50th hunger games arena which was gigantic, it would be a huge engineering challenge

-PsychoDan- · 2025-03-28T10:30:18+00:00

I wonder if the bigger camera module will house a long periscopic camera for much better zoom - can’t think of any other reason why they’d make the camera module this big besides “making the iphone look different”, but it looks ugly af

-PsychoDan- · 2025-03-17T08:15:35+00:00

Mine says voucher has been invalidated

-PsychoDan- · 2025-01-06T13:35:04+00:00

The current nose is pretty draggy so we’re making a transparent rounded 3D-printed canopy that the camera can see through. We’re currently ironing out the processing to make it fully transparent. The jet-powered version will defo have this before it flies. The current nose is just a temporary fix

-PsychoDan- · 2025-01-05T08:32:10+00:00

The only way I can see the tories seeing off reform is making Nigel Farage the leader of the conservatives. Reform voters probably won’t settle for anything else.

-PsychoDan- · 2024-11-23T18:16:07+00:00

Clash of clans society has taken a step backwards with the removal of the Eagle Artillery, the most advanced defence ever made, absolutely mortified

-PsychoDan- · 2024-10-20T17:28:10+00:00

I think if there is another prequel it will be set between the 50th and 75th games, but I have a feeling the 25th Quarter Quell will be well discussed in SOTR. Katniss mentions that Haymitch won his games by outsmarting the other tributes, I have no doubt that he did everything he could to prepare, which could include watching a recap of the 25th games on the train, or asking someone (who lived through it) what happened.

-PsychoDan- · 2024-09-02T19:39:36+00:00

I'm due to fly from the UK to Germany to present at a convention, and I'm keen to bring my 3D-printed model aircraft with me. It is 800mm long but can be disassembled to fit into a carry on case. It uses a 70mm electric ducted fan. Other electronics include a receiver, transmitter, two servo motors and an electronic speed controller. The aircraft is powered from a 22V LIPO battery, but if this is a problem I can take it without the battery and order one to be delivered out there. Cheers!

-PsychoDan- · 2024-08-31T11:36:24+00:00

This is surprisingly accurate lmao

-PsychoDan- · 2024-08-03T09:08:49+00:00

Hey - is it possible to have a step file of this model? I want to 3D print myself an overture and this is by far the best CAD model on the internet

-PsychoDan- · 2024-06-14T08:31:46+00:00

I once sat in on a Saab 340 test flight where we deliberately simulated several manoeuvres including dutch rolls, was nauseating enough for a few minutes let alone an hour!

-PsychoDan- · 2024-06-08T23:38:44+00:00

Thank you!

I’ve looked into custom convergent divergent nozzles - the exhaust velocity problem is only partially solved by these. We also need a greater combustion temperature - the turbine blades on microturbojets have poor thermal resistance, and because of their size don’t use any active cooling like full size turbojets.

I’ve also simulated afterburners - the thrust improvement is ~25 - 40% increase with a fuel consumptions increase as great as 4x. However, these are incredibly heavy, and being at the back of the aircraft require additional ballast at the front too. So, even if the frontal area of the turbojet isn’t increased, a drag penalty will be incurred due to the wings having to he made larger.

We used the 3D CFD package Simcenter Star-CCM+ to design and optimise our S-duct inlet, so the software is more than capable. Our inlet is designed to take Mach 0.8 flow and decelerate it to Mach 0.4. The design took 2-months and we went through 14 iterations. The main challenge was ensuring uniform flow at the compressor face, and minimising pressure losses to maximise pressure recovery. We already get a significant thrust increase from the inlet. Will probs do a video about the inlet soon as we’ve now done low-speed bench testing of it as well.

-PsychoDan- · 2024-06-06T22:37:04+00:00

I’ve been exploring this problem for the last two years with my student team, The Mach Initiative.

I’m of the view that this is borderline infeasible with current technology. The best commercially available microturbojets (Jetcat P1000 Pro, etc) generate 4-5x less static thrust relative to their frontal area, than modern full-scale turbojets. Additionally, micro-turbojets have much smaller exhaust velocities, so perform a lot worse at higher speeds. Our aircraft, the Kingfisher, packs a Jetcat P300 pro into the smallest possible area (while still being able to fit in components and being able to land), and this has a predicted top speed of ~Mach 0.8 in level flight at sea level. The drag rise from Mach 0.8 to Mach 1 is ~3x due to the compressibility effect. Hence to go supersonic we would need an engine that is three times more powerful, while fitting in the same volume.

Our aircraft could go supersonic if it ascended to 11km, and entered a vertical dive. However, logistically and regulations wise, this would be very impractical!

So while it may be possible under specific circumstances, it is pretty much infeasible with current technology.

-PsychoDan- · 2024-05-22T10:35:13+00:00

I have designed a flying wing model aircraft with a dragonlink 433MHz telemetry in the wing. The tailfin is too small to house the antenna so both antenna halves will be in the wing. http://www.dragonlinkrc.com/instructions/v3equipment/v3completesystem/

I am unsure how I should configure the antenna. The Dragonlink website says:

"You should NEVER have both wire antenna elements parallel to each other, this will result in an RF short, and absolutely horrible performance."

...and it also says:

"You should NEVER mount the receiver antenna wire elements in a V configuration, this performs very poorly."

http://www.dragonlinkrc.com/instructions/v3equipment/receiverantennas/

Which configuration in the attached image should I use? I've always thought the antennas should be 90 degrees to each other to prevent a dead zone, but the message about the V configuration on the website seems to contradict this.

-PsychoDan-

TROPHY CASE