[leo-leo]

I dont find it that unbelievable, there are a number of youtube videos of hobbyist grade quadcopters with what I believe are larger motors running 20-30 minutes on a pair of 18650 cells albeit without any autonomous capability.

https://youtu.be/BOZStU-QCSc

[StavrosK]

Hahah that's fantastic, how that thing even takes off with a 1S2P 18650 I'll never know. That's 100 grams just for the batteries.

[LeifCarrotson]

It's all about the cube-square law, the same reason a butterfly can remain airborne for hours or days on a few milligrams of chemical energy.

Getting RC aircraft to fly in the more laborious, sedate manner of a full-size aircraft instead of like an insect fluttering through the wind is something of a challenge for scale model builders. When you build an airframe around tiny batteries as a design constraint, expectations from larger aircraft don't carry over well.

[StavrosK]

Sure, but I'm an RC aircraft builder so my expectations are calibrated for that. Motors that small have a hard time lifting 180g at 1S.