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Showing content with the highest reputation on 09/03/2022 in all areas

  1. But you cannnot put 10 pounds of sausage in a 5 pound bag, no matter when or how or how quickly or slowly or efficiently or fairly you do it! The on-site hotel simply will not accommodate all of us. However else one may criticize the system this year, it was fair and even handed, giving everyone a level playing - field shot at a room. Having to deal with yet another new better (?) computerized electronic medical record system at my hospital, I can confidently affirm that people place way too much faith in these machines. They hinder as much as they supposedly help. “Open the pod bay door, HAL.” And even if the hotel failed somehow, ( and I am not suggesting they did) that is on them- not on Len and his team. Nick
    2 points
  2. I had no problems. I was sitting there when the clock hit midnight and had a room by 12:01. Dak
    2 points
  3. In no way do I blame Len’s team or the hotel, it looks like they both did what they could, kudos to them! There was no way everyone that wanted to was going to be able to stay at the Embassy, good on the San Marcos team for having 3 overflow hotels with a convention rate. And there are not many if any hotel booking sites that would not of at least had minor issues when hundreds of people log on at the same time. I think it’s great that the IPMS Nationals has grown to be so popular it draws so many people, and regularly gets 2500-3000 models on display at the contest!!
    1 point
  4. I looked at the hotel site on Thursday and it was locked for the convention. It opened fine last night at midnight. No problems what so ever. Dak
    1 point
  5. Got my reservation with not one problem. Was the fastest, easiest reservation I have made yet to the Nationals. Great work Len. Looking forward to being there next August. David Von Almen, Gentleman modeler
    1 point
  6. BLUF: If you could not get a room for Tuesday, or even Monday night, and you want one at the convention rate (to add to your existing Wed-Sat/Sun reservation), e-mail me and I will work with ES to add those days to your reservation. Details/Background: From where I was sitting last night it seems the Hilton reservation system worked as we were told. I'm glad that part worked out. I know many of you could not get into the block in time before it sold out. Unfortunately, the convention hotel for this upcoming convention is in very high demand. I will not get into it here, but the economics of the convention drive us to find these smaller/affordable convention centers with attached hotels that are not as big as we would like. A larger analysis needs to be done - and it will - by IPMS/USA as a whole regarding demand/location/pricing. However, what I want to address here are additional nights if someone could not get those when they booked last night. The way the convention contract is written, IPMS/USA is required to fill a very high percentage of contracted rooms in order not to be financially penalized by the hotel. The room block primarily focused on the Wed through Sat night dates...with checkout on Sunday (6 Aug). There are a healthy number of nights for Tues (1 Aug) in there as well but not the entire 260. Some of you were able to grab a Tuesday night, and some of you, no. As of right now, with all the reservations we have with the hotel, we are at, or very, very close to, 100%...which is good as it gives us a very strong bargaining position to add more room nights at the front end of the week. Now that we are in this sold-out situation with demand still as high as it is, I will go back to Embassy Suites and ask for additional room nights at the convention rate for Tuesday, 1 Aug. If you hold a reservation for 2-5 Aug and wish to add Tues, or even Monday, send me an email at chair.nats2023@gmail.com. Include the first and last name that the reservation is held under, and I will work with Embassy Suites next week to add those dates to your reservation at the convention rate of $160 per night. As usual, if you have any questions, please reach out to me at the e-mail above. -Len
    1 point
  7. Yep, yet another cluster f**k! I hit "book" at 1:07 and it wouldn't confirm. Called the reservation number and they said it had already sold out. Tried calling the hotel directly and although reservations answered (but they're "sold out"), no one at the front desk would answer the phone when they tried to connect me. SO now I guess we wait to see IF the hosts can expand the room block to give us another chance to get in. NOW you may see why I was harping on seeing if the Hilton was ready or not. Find it hard to believe they sold out in LESS than 10 minutes! Gil
    1 point
  8. Good BBQ would sell more banquet tickets. Have you considered having food trucks roll up during the day? Several local shows have started doing this to rave reviews. There's not much nearby, and "up the road" and/or "across" the interstate involves a 2 mile drive which will come as a surprise to those not accustomed to one-way frontage roads, and the u-turn lanes before the lights will frustrate some.
    1 point
  9. Welcome back. This is gonna be a very short tour, at least compared to what I've done in the past. We won't even need the trams as everything happened in the Motor Pool. Let's go in and see what's happened this past week. It's air conditioned so the heat won't bother us. We'll start with this Dragon M1128 Stryker MGS that I got. It went together so fast, I didn't even stop to take pics! Here it is after twenty minutes or so: There were three pieces of photo-etch to put on this. One on the bottom, the other two on top: This little thing is now ready for paint. Wow, only thirty five minutes of work. Now if things would cool down enough to start shooting paint... Until then, we went to work again on these. I could even consider them shelf queens of a sort since it's been about a year or so since we first started them. These are my Japanese mortar towing trucks; there are two kits inside the box. The first one had been built some time ago as an open topped vehicle with the mortar in firing position. The second one will be a closed topped one and towing the mortar. Here's where that one is right now: Here they are together. These are both almost ready for paint now too: Next up, we got the torsion bars on the IT-1 Drakon tank: Later we added the roadwheels, but I apparently didn't get pics of that. I did get pics of the roadwheels installed on the T-62 though: We then turned it over to check wheel alignment. Looks pretty good so far. We'll see how good when the tracks go on: Meanwhile, we went to work adding the hatches and all the other bits and bobs to the turret to finish it up. When it came time for the grab handles, the instructions said to use copper wire. Well, I didn't want to mess with wire, so we pulled out my stash of styrene rod, chose a size that looked about right and then started installing them. We drilled holes in the turret sides and then measured out the length of rod and cut them to size. We bent the one end and then cemented it in one of the holes in the turret: Later, when they were dry enough, we bent the other end and inserted it into the second hole as shown by one in the pic above. We had cut the styrene rod long enough that the tension caused from inserting the other end gave it a natural bend that looked perfect: We then mocked up the whole tank to see how well it has come together so far: Looking good so for if I do say so myself. After building all those T-64, T-72 and T-80 tanks with all the greeblies on them, I still say this turret is too empty! That be all for today; as I mentioned, it's a very short tour. Thanks all for looking in, comments are welcome.
    1 point
  10. Trumpeter T-90A kit with Meng figures and a mobile phone user from Blast Models. Pigeons and other stuff are Miniart. Building was made from AK carving foam and Evergreen plastic. Everything seen here has been seen on the news. Dak
    1 point
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