A Georgia Tech student says his dorm-built jet hit 491 mph

Tomas Salvo studies aerospace engineering at Georgia Tech. He says his homemade aircraft, the Reaper, reached 491 mph (about 790 km/h). He posted the result on X on October 30, 2026.

It was not an empty run. Salvo says the Reaper carried a 2.6-pound (1.2 kg) payload. A payload is just the cargo a plane carries, here a small weight on board.

This is a claim from the builder, and no outside group has checked the number yet.

The record for a radio-controlled jet model is 465 mph. It was set in 2017 by German pilot Niels Herbrich with a small delta-wing jet called Inferno. A delta wing is the triangle shape you know from fighter jets.

Guinness World Records lists the exact figure as 749.221 km/h, or 465.544 mph, set on 23 August 2017 in Rothenburg, Germany. Salvo's number is about 26 mph higher.

By the numbers: 491 mph minus 465 mph is a gap of roughly 5.5 percent. On a plane this fast, that is a big step.

The Reaper is also a delta-wing aircraft, and it looks like a small stealth jet. Salvo says he built it from scratch, with a mix of old-school craft and new tools.

• Engine: a 250-newton turbojet. A newton is a unit of push, and 250 newtons is about the weight of a 25 kilogram bag of flour hanging off the engine.
• Intake and nozzle: a custom air intake, and an exhaust nozzle made of titanium and produced with 3D printing.
• Body: molded carbon-fiber shells, which are light and very stiff. Laser-cut parts form the inside.
• Weight: around 5 kg, according to an earlier account of the project.

Salvo has built three working versions. He says each can hold 491 mph for four minutes on a full tank, and that the system is "a reliable and repeatable system" that gives closely matching results every time.

In real life Think of a kitchen-table project where you print a part, cut a part and mold a part, then bolt the pieces together. Now make the project fast enough to cross a football field in less than half a second.

Salvo says he began the Reaper in February, working in university housing. He showed the aircraft publicly in July, after about five months of building. At that first reveal he talked about reaching 500 mph.

Back then he described a hand-laid carbon-fiber body shaped over molds cut from MDF, a common wood-fiber board. He has been flying it ever since, and the October post is the first time he put a speed number on the result.

The whole project cost about $13,000. Salvo paid for it himself.

Speed is not the only number he gave. Here is the rest of the list:

• Climb: it can leave a launch rail or a truck-mounted launcher and reach 6,600 feet (2,000 m) in under 20 seconds.
• Range at top speed: about 31 miles (50 km).
• Launch: from a rail or from the back of a truck, so it does not need a runway.
• Next goal: more testing and tuning to reach 500 mph (800 km/h).

At that speed the plane would use up its fuel quickly. Salvo's earlier account mentions about two minutes of full throttle, so those four minutes at 491 mph are a number worth checking in the real world.

Salvo's post caught the eye of Prescott Paulin, who leads industry engagement for a team in the US Department of War's Research and Engineering office. Paulin publicly invited the student to visit the department.

That is an invitation, not a contract. It does show that a $13,000 project can get attention from people who work on military technology, because fast, small, cheap aircraft are interesting to them.

The big picture: drones used to be the territory of big companies. A student with a 3D printer, a laser cutter and a turbojet can now build something that looks like it came from a lab.

Salvo says he hopes to win the Boom Prize. Boom Supersonic CEO Blake Scholl first offered $100,000 for the first amateur-built radio-controlled plane to pass Mach 1. On July 10 he turned it into $750,000 in cash plus $50,000 in Boom stock.

The rules are strict:

• Speed: faster than Mach 1 (the speed of sound, about 761 mph at sea level) for at least five seconds.
• Repeat: the feat must happen twice on the same day with the same aircraft.
• Engine: air-breathing engines only, such as turbojets, turbofans or ramjets. No rockets, no onboard oxidizers, no one-time-use aircraft.
• Who can enter: amateurs only, with no company sponsors or venture capital. Entrants must be US citizens, permanent residents or people granted asylum.
• Judges: former Boeing CEO Phil Condit, SpaceX co-founder Tom Mueller and astrophysicist Scott Manley.
• Deadline: the contest stays open until 2030.

The prize would need about 270 mph more than the Reaper's claimed speed. Mach 1 is a very different problem, because air pushes back much harder near the speed of sound.

Inferno is tiny. It is about a foot long and roughly 4.5 inches across, and it is powered by a hobby turbine engine, a Behotec 180. It was built for one thing, a straight and very fast pass.

The Reaper is a different kind of machine. It is bigger, it uses a stronger 250-newton engine, and it carries cargo. Salvo says it can also fly long runs, with some flights covering more than 30 km and the aircraft flying 4 to 5 km away from its pilot.

That makes the comparison a little tricky. A record plane is a sprinter. A plane that sprints with a payload, repeats the run, and lands safely is closer to a working machine.

Why it matters: if the claim is confirmed, the new record would come from a student project that is built to be flown again and again, not from a one-off.

That is a fair question, and it came up when the project was first shown in July. Flying a 500 mph aircraft beyond the pilot's sight needs special permission from the US Federal Aviation Administration, called a waiver. As of July, no such waiver had been granted for a hobby flight at that speed.

Salvo has not said where the test flights took place or what approvals he had. That is one more detail that outside reviewers will likely ask about.

Three things would turn the claim into a record.

• Independent checking: an outside group would need to review the flight data and the timing.
• A repeat: the 2017 record stood because it was measured and logged under a set method.
• Public footage: people want to see the run, with clear speed data.

The catch: until then, the headline is "student says," not "student sets." The 465 mph record stands on the books.

• Do not expect one in a shop: the Reaper is a hand-built test aircraft, not a product.
• Skills are the story: 3D printing, laser cutting and carbon fiber are now within reach of a determined student.
• Watch for proof: a verified run would make this a real record. Until then, treat 491 mph as a claim.
• Prizes drive builders: the Boom Prize gives hobbyists a reason to build faster, and 2030 gives them time.