RiverCon VIII. Richard called Andy Bloom, President of the River River Modelers, to ask about any other places

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1 RiverCon VIII The Red River Modelers in the Shreveport/Bossier City area have been putting on a model show for several years and with each event they host they get better with more models entered and better facilities as they find them. This year the show was in the Bossier City Convention Center with a similar set-up as we have at Modelmania. Wanting to see what had changed since I attended this show 4 years ago, I decided at the last minute to make the 4-1/2 hr drive to Bossier City and participate. Like Vince, Richard, and Mike Stucker, I elected to drive up on Friday afternoon in lieu of having to get up at 3:00 a.m. on Saturday morning and make this long drive. The drive up on Friday was uneventful and I arrived to the Hilton Garden Inn hotel just after Mr. Kern did at 3:30 p.m. Richard got us rooms next door to one another which made it convenient to go back and forth fixing models, b.s. g, etc. I think we can both highly recommend this beautiful hotel which had a great breakfast the following morning. Vince stayed at a casino hotel so he could gamble a bit on Friday night and Mike had a suite across the river in Shreveport someplace. As always, Rick Cotton found the cheapest motel he could find. When I checked into the hotel I asked the front desk clerk if there were any good places to eat within walking distance and she immediately said, Sir, you don t want to walk any place in Bossier City! If you have never been to Bossier City, that pretty much describes the place. Having a late afternoon with time to kill, Richard and I decided to find whatever stores that resembled a hobby shop as we could find before dinner. There was a HobbyTown about 10 miles from the hotel on Youree Drive (the main drag of Bossier City), so we decided to start there. We found it without too much difficulty only to find it was closed with a Store Closing sign written on the front window. The store was still fully stocked (mostly toys from what we could see), but there was just no one there and it was locked up tight. This is probably an example of things to come with our own low end HobbyTown on Highway 6. Richard called Andy Bloom, President of the River River Modelers, to ask about any other places

2 to go and he put us on to a place called T&T Hobby Shop on Mansfield Road. After a short tour of the area in an industrial area of Bossier City, Richard was able to spot it sitting way back off the road beyond some railroad tracks. To the right of the road was a large RC car race track that did not look like it had been used in many years. It was all overgrown and in pretty bad shape. When we walked in the place it was pretty dark and foreboding. Only about 1/3 of the overhead lights were working and the whole place had an erie look to it. EVERYTHING was covered with dust, dirt, and cobwebs and reminded me of the Adams Family mansion. It just had a very old smell to it. The two people working the store seemed friendly enough and weren t covered in tattoos or dressed in grunge clothing, so we felt comfortable enough to look around. Richard asked about plastics and the lady pointed us to the back of the store. They had a few armor kits, even less aircraft, and one shelf full of large trucks kits that looked brand new. Everything else was covered in dust. Richard found an armor kit that looked promising, so he carried it back up to the front while I wandered over the paint racks. All of the bottles were covered in dust and most of them looked solidified. We passed on buying any paint! 90% of the store dealt with R/C planes and helicopters and they had a large stock of parts and accessories. We left feeling we had escaped with our life s none worse for wear. Dinner that night consisted of excellent shrimp and catfish dinners found at Shane s Seafood and Crawfish House back on Youree Drive, though a place like this will drive your cholesterol and blood pressure numbers through the roof. But hey, we re on vacation! Saturday morning we had a great buffet breakfast at the hotel and then drove the 2 or 3 minutes it took us to get to the convention center. It was still early, 8:00 a.m., but they were already registering models and the vendor and contest room were wide open and doing business. It had been raining that morning, but it graciously stopped by the time Richard and I started moving our models inside. Richard brought 63 models of his own and 24 of Tom Moon s to enter. I brought two. At $2 per model fee, they were glad to see Richard come through the door. He probably carried a large portion of their costs! The vendor and model contest areas shared the same large room. Unfortunately, they had only seven or eight vendors using 30 of approximately 50 tables laid out. For some reason, this show has never attracted very many vendors. It may be the distance from

3 most of the clubs in our Region, or it could be that they just don t advertise that tables are available as much as Lee Backsen does. This was the vendor area, all in one corner. You can see in this photo some empty vendor tables. The contest area was large and there was plenty of room to walk between tables, the lighting was good for photos, and the categories were well laid out. By the close of registration, there were still a lot of categories that were either empty or pretty thin. By far, the heaviest categories were all in armor with some of these so heavy they were split 3 ways. In aircraft, I would estimate that each category only averaged 4 to 5 entries with the OOTB category (All Scales, All Eras) probably being the heaviest. Regardless of the category, the quality level was high and there were some really outstanding models at the show. There was also a $25 gift certificate given to the modeler who had driven the farthest to the show which Dick Montgomery won by driving 511 miles from San Antonio to Bossier City. The vendor who came the farthest was John s Models from Pensacola, FL. The Red River Modelers had several tables of door prizes and a raffle table of larger, better kits. Door prize tickets were $1 and the raffle prize tickets were $5 each. When I first got there I looked over the door prizes to see if it was worth buying some additional tickets (40 for $20), but the vast majority of the kits were junk from the back of people s collections. This is a good example of why Vince stresses NO donations of this type for our show. They had drawings every 30 mins. Rick Cotton won 4 or 5 kits and I know Richard Kern got three, all amour models. I think Vince and Mike won several as well.

4 On display was a collection of 1/72nd scale bomber and tanker aircraft that had flown out of Barksdale AFB in Bossier City. These will all eventually be placed in the 8th Air Force Museum. There was a KC-10, three B-52 s, C-97, C-133, B-47, B-50, etc. The turn-out of judges was excellent and they had more than enough people to cover all of the categories. Rick volunteered to judge aircraft, Richard and I volunteered to judge Junior and dioramas. Unfortunately, there were only six or seven junior models in all of the Junior categories combined. During the awards ceremony, they waited to present the Junior awards until the very last which I thought was a big negative. As we do, they should have done this first so the kids and their families could leave if they had to. With so many judging teams available, the judging got finished by about 3:00 p.m and the awards presentation started at 3:15 p.m. with some announcements on upcoming shows in Region VI. Two hours later they were still passing out awards! This was probably the slowest and longest awards presentation I had ever been to. Although I wanted to stay to the very end, by 5:15 p.m. I had had enough and left for the long drive home. I was told it did not conclude until almost 6:00 p.m. So, who won from IPMS Houston? Here are the numbers as I know them. Vince Barrale entered 9 models and won 7 awards Mike Stucker entered 11 models and won 8 or 9 awards Boyd Waechter entered 2 models and won 2 awards Rick Cotton entered 10 models and won 8 awards Richard Kern entered 63 models and won 54 awards Tom Moon By Proxy Richard entered 24 of Tom s models which won 10 to 12 awards I was on the road by 5:30 p.m. heading south towards Katy for an uneventful drive home. Being almost 70 years old, these long road trips by myself in the night will probably come to an end very soon. Like Mike, Vince, and Rick did, I ll probably start staying over a 2nd night as well in order to awake refreshed and make the drive home on Sunday mornings. Below are a few photos of the models on display. I hope you enjoy them. Boyd Waechter Secretary IPMS Houston

5 AMT 1/48th Douglas A-20G Havoc Monogram 1/48th B-26 Marauder Flak Bait

6 Special Hobby 1/48th Saab Viggen this model won 1st Place in it s category, Best Aircraft, and Best of Show. It was just outstanding. Revell 1/72nd German U-Boat entered in the Grand Campions category.

7 Wing Nut Wings 1/32nd Phaltz D.XII by Dick Montgomery Kittyhawk 1/48th F-101A Voodoo

8 Rat Rod Diorama (100% scratchbuilt) 1/72nd Scale KC-10 Defender (Kit Unknown)

9 1/6th Scale Figure from 2003 movie Timeline based on Michael Crichton novel.

10 Backside of the 1/6th scale Timeline figure called Timeline Hunter