One of my favorite tanks of all time is the Maus. There’s just something about that 200 ton mass rolling under its own power that absolutely enthralls me. Certainly there is also some boyish naivety about war mixed in there too, but I prefer to focus on the engineering that went into creating the heaviest tank ever made. In my state of adoration I’ve gone so far as to make my own 1/35 scale Tamiya tank, to write a research report and presentation for a capstone project, to grind the tier list in the computer game World of Tanks, and finally to visit the Kubinka Tank Museum in Russia to see, touch, and take pictures with the only surviving Maus.
To complete the Maus chapter of my life though and close the cover on this somewhat obsession, I decided to undertake a ground-up construction of a 1/16 scale RC Maus. The whole thing would be designed, sourced, bought, and fabricated by myself. Part of my inspiration for this project was the ridiculously high price of 1/16 scale models, and the lack of appreciation out there for the Maus. Over the next year or so I developed a series of videos documenting my progress:
Finally though I finished my monstrous creation. It had a working turret with elevation and traverse, two independently controlled tracks, a smoke machine, and was just the embodiment of what I had wanted to do. This was one of those projects where I decided to do it right, rather than fast, and I think it paid off:
One sticking point of this whole adventure was that I wanted to make the files open to the public, so that Maus enthusiasts like me could make their own mini-maus. I had begun to think about how much I detested pay-walls and the consumer culture that permeates American culture. If some person, much like me, out there wants to have a Maus, then by all means they should be able to put in the effort themselves and make it!
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