Recently, Hasegawa and Tamiya reissued a few of their 1/48 scale World War II fighter kits with spinning propellers – small electric motors buried inside the nose do the job. I thought, “hey, what about us 1/72 scale builders? Where are our motorized kits?”

Never one to wait around for anything, I looked for a way to motorize a 1/72 scale model. I had seen it done before. Two models in particular caught my attention at past IPMS/USA National Conventions: Raleigh Williams’ beautiful Frog Vickers Vimy in Chicago in 2001 and Lynn Rowley’s Hasegawa B-17 in his spectacular forced-perspective diorama of a midair collision with a Messerschmitt shown in Virginia Beach in 1996. These modeling masterpieces had one thing in common; spinning propellers, each powered by a pager buzzer motor.

A what? You know, those buzzing pagers? There’s a tiny motor inside them…

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