Theme award......Best use of a National Convention Decal question

[SABregi]

As stated in the rules the theme awards will be stand alone categories. What about the "The Past Presidents’ Award for Best Use of a National Convention Decal" award? will this be a stand alone category or will it be selected from all the other categories?

[Ron Bell]

The stand alone special categories are numbered as normal categories. All other specials are selected from all categories and are not numbered.

 

Of course, Best Aircraft is selected from all a/c, and Best Ship from all ships, etc. etc.

[SABregi]

I am asking because it did not state if the convention decal was a special category or not!

[SABregi]

And what exactly are the Theme awards? All it does is divide what ever it is up by date!?

[Ron Bell]

Normally, these awards are for some aspect of the convention's theme. They usually span all of a main category, such as a/c, mil.veh, etc, but many have spanned all categories, such as Best General Motors Subject or such like. Models were entered in their appropriate category and could get an award in that category, but could also qualify for the specials. While this was nice for the models, it made record keeping more difficult in that those that qualified needed to be identified in some way and the judges had to find models spread out all over the room, possibly comparing ones on opposite sides of the room or having to move models, which in some instances was not possible.

 

We're trying a new approach. Our theme is History through Modeling, so any model of anything can qualify for one of the awards based on its time frame. Under the old system, that would be very difficult for the judges to judge as they'd have to look at every model in the room that is in a certain time frame. So, we decided that our special theme awards would be grouped together in separate categories. That way the judges, and by the way the public, can see all the models that qualify in one place. The only drawback we could see was that a model could not win a normal category award and a special theme award as it can only be entered in one category. This would effect very few models/modelers and in the end spreads the awards around a little better. We ran it by the National Contest Committee and they thought it was a good idea, so we went with it. If it works, great. If it's a bust, the next guy will know better.