This weekend, I decided to take a small break from building normal kits to build something simple and fun. I've been super busy with work lately after moving into a new office and I was thinking that a kit from Hasegawa's egg plane series would be a nice decoration on my new desk, at least till my 1/24 scale Spitfire has been completed.
Instead of just building the kit through the normal procedure, I decided to insert a small electric motor for the propellers. I had previously bought some motors and for this kit, I inserted the smallest one (about 1cm in length) which can be typically found inside cellphones and are used for the vibration/silent mode.
Photos of the building process :
Surprisingly, the motor fits right into the engine. Only needed CA glue to fix it in place.
The model is going to be displayed as being in flight on top of a wooden base so I drilled a hole at the bottom of the fuselage and hot glued an aluminium pipe which acts as a stand as well a tube for the wires.
A dry run to see how the model sits on the base.
As the build is pretty straightforward from here on, I just went along and completed the model without taking any further photos of the building process.
Here are photos of the finished model, painted and weathered.
2 holes have been drilled into the base, one vertically for the pipe and another horizontally for the wires. I soldered the wire ends onto a couple of jumper leads so that whenever I want to have the propellers spinning, the batteries can be connected to the motor through a jumper cable without the need for a switch.
Perhaps later I'll build a small box underneath the base high enough to fit the battery case and add a small switch as well.
Here's the setup.
... and lastly, a video of the propellers in action.
* UPDATE
I ended up adding a simple box underneath the base to house the batteries and a mini toggle switch. I spent about an hour making the box and it's made from PVC foam board, primarily used for signs or displays.
The screw is just aesthetic, to cover up the hole where the wires initially were.
3 comments:
I AM THINKING ABOUT THE PROP SPINNING ALSO, HOWEVER I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE THE BATTERY(S) LOCATED INSIDE THE FUSELAGE WITH A HIDDEN SWITCH IN THE WHEEL WELL OF AIR INTAKE. NO STAND WOULD BE NEEDED, JUST CHOCKS IN FRONT OF THE WHEELS. I AM ALSO LOOKING FOR THE AVENGER, A-10 WARTHOG, STUKA, SPARROWHAWK AND F-9F PANTHER...ANY CLUES, ANY ONE?
HARRY hclloydjr@yahoo.com
It's a good idea to have the battery inside the model. The only problem is replacing the battery once it's run dry. Also, you might want to look into "magnetic switches" which you can stick to the inside of the fuselage and use a magnet to turn the motor on or off. I was googling for scale model navigation lights when I came across this type of switch. Try this site : http://www.ravenscalemodels.com/
Good luck on your search!
Extremely cool idea! Thanks for sharing!
Adding navigation lights might be an update option, too.
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