At DRIVE/Aerial, we have a system for putting off sleep. We start on Reddit, perusing the typical subs. Move onto YouTube and jump around; anything from new reviews to travel and freestyle vlogs, to beautiful cinematography. If sleep hasn't beckoned by that point, we go on to specific dives: learning new tuning methods, or reading up on how arm design impacts thrust. All of which, ultimately, leads to aimless clicking on Mini Quad Test Bench (MQTB). It always amazes us to think how far we came from the first DYS 2204 2300kv motors that we put on our ZMR 250 (which, yes, we still fly). Now we are wowed, but not surprised, when we see impressive numbers coming from brands that are turning in to household names. Then, with one click, sleep is gone. The X-Foot 2207 2600kv has completely destroyed the competition with their first motor.

Hans Turpyn - X Foot

What blew us away were the thrust figures. Basically, the more grams of thrust, the faster the drone goes—and each gram of thrust added requires a feat of engineering. Using something like a dynamometer for RC motors, MQTB measures motor thrust output in grams (see the graph of X-Foot motor, below). The best motors on the market start off at around 1100 grams of thrust and peak at 1500; the X-Foot motor starts at 1300g and peaks at 1634g, thereby destroying the competition, and becoming the fastest motor on the market. At this point you may be asking: Who the hell is this company, and how do I buy its motor? As it turns out, that's a pretty hard question to answer. Luckily, we did the necessary digging. After digging through YouTube videos, joining a private Facebook group, and befriending the manufacturer, we finally got to the last step before purchasing the motor: messaging X-Foot owner, Hans Turpyn. After going through a bunch of steps that felt like the nerdiest drug deal in history, we got the full story from Turpyn himself.

Turpyn believes "manufacturers only look to the static thrust test; these show that motors with a bit lower kV (RPM per Volt) do better—but in real world the motors work in a dynamic environment where they profit [from] that little extra kV." Basically, conventional wisdom tells us that the lower the rotations per volt (kV), the more torque produced. With the X-Foot, Turpyn gambled on a bit higher kV (2600, compared to typical 2300) while sacrificing some torque to produce a higher top end speed—and it worked. Wanting to keep costs low by skipping a third-party distributor, Hans personally ships each motor piece by piece (hence the Facebook and PayPal set-up). When we asked why he decided to enter the market, Hans replied "I am a real enthusiast myself, and that's the goal—pushing the hobby further."



