Modelfiesta 36 Wrap-Up

Modelfiesta 36 Wrap-Up Modelfiesta 36 was held this past weekend at the San Antonio Event Center, the same venue the Alamo Squadron has had it in for the past several years. However, this year the parking was free instead of the usual $5 fee, but the parking lot wasn t any better. Rick Cotton picked me up promptly at 6:00 a.m. and after a stop at Snowflake Donuts we headed west for 3 hours of conversation on all sorts of topics, typical road talk to help pass the time. We arrived at the pot holed parking lot at 9:00 a.m. and found a spot where all four tires were actually on level pavement. This center has got to repave the parking area one of these days. The first item of business was to register our models which went smoothly and efficiently. They had four people registering models this year instead of the one old man that was there last year who took forever to clock in a single model. After multiple complaints, this year the chapter had the registration and ticket sales tables much better organized and everyone coming in was quickly taken care of. Next step was to find our categories and put our models on display. Since registration had just opened, it was still early and there were not many models on the tables. After getting our models in place, Rick and I headed over the vendor area to find some of our guys who were vending (Mike West, Richard Kern, Piotr Gomola, and Vince Barrale). There were two kits I was hoping to find, so I went off on my own to search every vendor table in the place hoping to score these at a reasonable (i.e., cheap) price. Unfortunately, despite the high number of vendors and kits being sold, they were not to be had on that day. Rick picked-up a 1/32nd A-4 and 1/32nd F-86F from Paul Lemon that he can easily flip and make 100% profit. As the morning progressed, more and more models came into the contest area and before registration closed at noon, there were almost 650 models on the contest tables. We had a judges meeting at noon that was followed by a free lunch (pizza) for those who volunteered to help judge. Unfortunately, as always, you had to pull teeth to get people to help out. Our club had a large number of members attend, but only myself, Tom Moon, David Hogue, Fred Keal, and Roy McCartney stepped up to help, though I had been contacted earlier by Show Coordinator Rob Booth and asked to be Head Aircraft Judge, with Tom Moon being asked to be Head Armor Judge. Once judging got started, there was no one available to judge either ships or cars, so guys like David Hogue (who is multi-talented) judged both airplanes and ships. I had three judging teams to pick the winners in the large number of aircraft categories (17), but again, these were torn apart at various times so that the car and ship categories could also be judged. All around it was just a slow day with a lot of guys judging that didn t really have any experience doing so. But, I can tell you that David

Hogue, Fred Keal, and Roy McCartney did a monumental job sticking with it for over four hours and I very much appreciated their help. I am sure they were as tired as I was by the end of the day. Due to the lack of judges, the awards program was late getting started as we were still selecting the Best of Show and some of the specialty awards at 4:30 p.m. The San Antonio group had planned to show the winners of each category on a large screen TV placed at the head of the awards presentation area, but their computer crashed just before the awards program began. They had two photographers and four lap tops going strong all day putting photos and data into a software program one of their members wrote specifically to try and do this. Dick Montgomery told me it was so labor intensive that he doubted they would ever try to do it again. He offered IPMS Houston the software in case we wanted to try, but I quickly declined. Sometimes the old ways are the best ways. As the awards were announced, it was quickly realized that IPMS Houston was going to take home a lot of awards. As usual, Richard Kern won the most awards from our group (7 or 8), as well as winning the Best F-4 Phantom II specialty award with his beautiful Monogram F-4C. Vince won several awards, as well as the Best Sci-Fi Model specialty award. Tom Moon won two awards (2nd in Artillery and a 3rd in Miscellaneous Mechanical), but most importantly, he won the Theme award Everything Is Bigger In Texas, for his Big Bertha rail gun. Roy McCartney won several awards that included a 1st with his 1/72nd DeHavilland Swallow resin kit and a 3rd in the Non-Fictional Spacecraft & Rocket category with his V-2 buzz bomb. Mike Stucker won a 2nd and a 3rd in small scale cars, and David Qu won several awards for his Unimog Truck, 1/144th Tu-160, WWII German truck, and the Doolittle Raider Award for his 1/700th scale USS Hornet Tokoyo Raiders.

I entered my recently completed Tamiya N1K1 Rex floatplane and Vought F4U-1D Corsair finished as a NFG-1D in Glenview NAR marking winning a 1st and 3rd place respectively. Best of Show this year went to Seattle, WA. resident Marc Schachter for his 1/48th scale Hawker Sea Fury that was just superb. He totally rebuilt the old Hobbycraft kit into a real piece of art. Not only did he win 1st place in the 1/48th scale Single Engine Allied category, but he won Best Aircraft and of course, Best of Show. Marc will surely be bringing this model to the Nats in Omaha this summer.

Below is the theme award won by Tom Moon, a large eagle that is very attractive. So, all in all, our guys from Houston won a lot of awards, those vending sold a lot of stuff, and again, as Head Aircraft Judge, I want to thank David Hogue, Fred Keal, and Roy McCartney for helping us with the judging. I know this took away from your time in the vendor area and looking at the models, but as I told Fred, judging will make you a better modeler every time. Getting to study each model in a category, up close, to see what the judges are looking for will improve your models overall if you take heed of the comments you hear and what you see. Boyd Waechter Secretary

1/48th Single Engine Aircraft category. There were 37 entries in this one category alone, so we split it into Allied (20) and Axis (17) aircraft. The 1/48th scale Multi-Engine category can be seen at the very end of the table, eight entries.