Schmitz

I'd guess there is no one answer as to what people are looking for in the Nats. I have taken advantage of the great room deals the Orlando folks made to take my family to Disney twice, and on the first trip we learned that when we're combining a family vacation with a Nats we have to add a few days for family time because there are going to be 2 or 3 days when I'm at the show and they're not going to see me. Aside from Disney we haven't done any more doubling up, mostly because the locations haven't been all that exciting for my family (I think we considered a double-dip for Virginia Beach once, but it fell through due to some family emergency). I have to admit the last few Nats I rarely made it out of the hotel except for a short trip to a restaurant for dinner. Occasionally there is a good modeling-related tour (e.g. the Shelby museum in Loveland), but I rarely see any of the local touristy things there just due to lack of time, as without the family being there I'm unlikely to take extra vacation days to see the sites. At this point in my life easy travel and a nice venue (big display and vendor rooms, lots of nearby restaurants and snack bars, reasonable priced rooms) are more important than the locations, but if I were retired or had young kids again I'd probably have a very different take. I think that's a good reason to rotate the show to appeal to everyone at least every few years. Don

Kimbo, I can't help you, but the person who probably can is Mike Mackowski. He is a member of IPMS, but I don't think he participates on this forum very much. You can find his contact info on his web site: http://www.spaceinminiature.com/contacts.html Good luck - sounds like a fun project (a lot of modelers would love to meet the people you've interviewed - when you're done please post your report here!) Don

Three Rivers IPMS is holding their annual show on March 12th (Sat). Same location as the last few years: Beattie Career Center (map) 9600 Babcock Blvd Allison Park PA 15101 Doors open at 9AM. Show website: http://www.tricon.tripms.org (should be updated soon if not already) I'm the official-vendor-guy, 6-foot vendor tables are $25; you can get in touch with me at dnschmtz@gmail.com. Feel free to ask me any questions you might have. Don Schmitz

George, Years ago I had picked up a roll of this tape at a hardware store and tried to figure out how to do this. I never got very good results and eventually gave it up; the job you did on this plane is just amazing! I'll take a look at the video and give it another try. Thanks! Don

Are "Metal Work Panels" a product? can you tell us how they work and where you get them? There are some polished-aluminum sports cars that should be this shiny... Don

Try (just a little) goo-b-gone on a q-tip. I think its citrus based and I haven't had any problems with it removing paint. It is a little oily; follow up with mild soap and water. Don

Thanks guys. I googled a bit and found some of the high-end diecasts and professionally built models (some with 4-digit price tags!). The Model Factory Hiro kit is tempting as 1/20 always seemed like a good scale for F1 kits, but I'm hitting a real psychological barrier at paying (a lot) more than $100 for a kit - I think I'll hold out hopes that Ebbro or Tamiya do an injection kit some day...

I was passing through Indianapolis last weekend and stopped in the hall-of-fame at the speedway. They have a special display of Gurney's AAR cars. First time I had seen this F1 car, and it is gorgeous. Had anyone ever kitted this? Seems like a natural subject for Ebbro...

The earliest kits I remember were birthday/Christmas presents (around 1965) - first kits included a nameless 1/72 biplane (it was green), dinosaurs, a Batman figure, a Batmobile and the Revell Mercury-Gemini capsule double kit. When I moved up to spending my own money, my home town had two 5-and-10s, a Woolworth and a McCrory's, and both provided a steady stream of car kits. I wasn't allowed to bike into "town", so I would have to wait until Dad needed something at the hardware store and tag along. At the end of every summer, we would make a special trip to the "city" of Greensburg (PA) - population about 20,000! - to buy new school clothes at a discount department store called GeeBees, next door to an actual hobby shop (I think the name was Peterman's Hobby - a name that just popped into my head after 50 years). I would grimly endure trying on an endless stream of pants and shirts to earn 15 minutes shopping for models; I think I got the AMT Star Trek Enterprise kit there around 1969. Don

Ron, It sounds like - and please correct me if I'm wrong - you're saying the "best bid" is the one that makes the most money for IPMS. That seems short-sighted. The Nat's is one of the main assets of IPMS - people join up just to attend. We want as many IPMS members - from everywhere - to attend regularly, and have a good time, and not feel like they're getting squeezed for every nickle IPMS can get (leave that to the airlines for the trip to the show), so they keep coming back every time they have a chance. To my mind, IPMS should set a target for revenue based on experience and minimizing the risk of a loss, and set a target for cost-to-attend based on what we know members are willing to pay, and if you've got two bids that meet those targets, than they're equal there and you can look at the rest of the package: tours, seminars, and geographic coverage. By making those targets public, the bidders will know what they need to be competitive, and they can try to juggle everything else to make their event fit the finances and still have the best package. As long as there is a revenue share, the hosts will have an incentive to do better than the target, but I'd sooner see the hosts spending to make the show better than trying to maximize the profit. Don

The distribution for the Hampton Nats - aside from an obvious boost from Northern VA - looks a lot like the population density of the entire US; the clusters of registrations in the west basically correspond to the population centers (suggests the percentage of people willing to fly across the country for a model contest is the same everywhere). Spend some time getting driving distances out of Google Maps and you'll see that no cities in the west are really driving distance close - at least not in the way that Baltimore is close to Virgina Beach - except for Phoenix and Los Angeles (about 400 miles apart). Add in the fact that Phoenix is not a major tourist draw like the coast, and that it is a Southwest Airlines hub and I think its hard to beat as a western location.

Jim, I wasn't trying to make an excuse for anything - just explain that there is no rotation any more and why. I wasn't at the bid presentation and don't know any details. For most of us on the east coast, going to Omaha is no easier than going to Phoenix - you pretty much have to fly either way. I've been to Phoenix and Loveland in the last 10 years, but we have relatives in Phoenix so that was a family vacation, and Colorado was just after I had made my kid's last tuition payment and I was feeling rich. I had a great time on both trips, but as I get closer to retirement, I have to think those cross country jaunts are going to get harder for me to justify. I think you're right that west coast bids have a built in disadvantage in competing with east-coast/mid-west bids, just because their costs are going to be higher and their estimated attendance will be lower. I think you guys (and any other clubs in the west who are interested in bidding in the near future) should get together with the new 2nd VP and hash out some guidelines where western cities will have a fair chance to win a bid. Don

Ralph, I'm sure the general distribution of membership hasn't changed much, but the last 40 years have seen huge population growth in the south-west and west-coast so those areas might have changed a bit. If you just want to see the current population distribution of the US, I like this map: http://demographics.coopercenter.org/DotMap/ (try turning off the color coding and turning on labels). It is amazing how empty the western half of the country is - Phoenix and Denver are the only real population centers not on the coast (Salt Lake City, Boise and Spokane may be roughty the same size - I'm not sure if there are IPMS chapters in those cities). Don

Phil, the rotation was officially removed a few years ago (if I remember, it required an amendment to the C&BL, and the E-board put on a full court press to get out the vote to approve it). The problem with the rotation was that if no one bid from the designated area (in which case bidding would be opened up to everyone) other chapters would have a limited amount of time to put a bid together. Don

Rusty - I think those parenthesized letters are referring to James Kelley's screen name...

Seems like a good start. One thing to think about from the beginning is how to keep the core committee staffed. People will burn out over time, so making it a "for life" position may not be a good idea, but you also want continuity on the committee and the ability to draw replacements from an experienced pool. Maybe each host chapter should appoint a "liaison" to work with their committee counterpart, that would create a pool of known candidates to draw from. Don

Steven, We've had this discussion before (I've made similar suggestions in the past - e.g. ski-resorts during the summer). We don't strictly need a convention center, but it simplifies so many other things that the lower costs are not as significant as you think. You need a site with good accessibility by air, as half of the attendees do not drive. Which also means you need transport from the airport to the venue, and if the model show is not right next to the hotel(s), you need a shuttle service (because a lot of the out-of-town attendees don't want to spend $40 a day for a rental car that isn't going anywhere). If the location is too remote, there are no restaurants near by, which adds more to the out of pocket cost if you have to eat the hotel restaurant. If you just have a big empty warehouse or hangar, you need to bring in tables and cater food. Using a convention center just simplifies many things. Its not accurate to say that we can't hold a Nats in big city - we can't hold a Nats in a big city that is not a convention city. Places like Orlando have worked because they have the necessary infrastructure in volume; there are many competing convention sites there to keep the prices down.

For the folks who've actually run a Nats, would upping our prices to those comparable with other hobby shows open up more venues and attract more potential hosts? Basic registration at the model railroad shows is about $150, and then everything else (seminars, tours, banquets, etc.) are extra. I'm pretty sure an extra $50 or even $100 for registration would have little impact on a lot of the "regulars" at the Nats, I don't know how much it would effect the more casual attendees. Don

If we had 5 bidders every year, then bidders would expect to lose, but given how hard it is to find bidders to start with, rejecting 1 of 2 good bids seems like a mistake. Seems like we could modify our bidding procedure somehow so we could optionally award two Nats at once (one for 2 years and one for 3 years into the future). That might not always work out - a chapter might not be able to push out their dates by a year, but they would have a head-start on the planning and would at least have a chance to recoup some of the work that went into the bid. Don

Thanks Dave. A friend told me I had to see the p-47, but I thought he said b-47 and never did find one of those:) I'll have to wait for the pix.

Due to complications beyond my control, I got to spend just 1 day at the nats and had to leave before the awards, definitely not enough... Can someone tell us what the big winners were? Thanks! Don

It is with sadness that I report that Jim "Doc" Bonanni passed away on July 2nd. Jim was a long time IPMS member, a founding member of the Three Rivers IPMS Chapter, and for years a regular at National Conventions and model shows up and down the east coast. Walking through a contest room with Jim was always an adventure, as he seemed to meet an old friend every few feet traveled. Jim always had a joke to tell, and I have fond memories of him holding court in the club "hospitality suite" at our last Regional; he was a great guy to share a beer or a long ride to a model show, and he will be greatly missed in our club. Visitation will be held Sunday evening in Sharpsville, PA.

If you just want to get it in the contest, maybe buy two memberships and enter it as a group entry? It's not your typical group entry, but I think it meets the letter of the rule.

GIL, I think you're conflating two different issues. You're right that IPMS is unlikely to convince kids (teenagers) to take up modeling the way we did in the 50s and 60s. We can do basic outreach just to plant the seeds, but we're not going to displace computer games and Facebook, and we shouldn't invest too much time and money there. What we should be doing is trying to reach today's 30-somethings and pull them into the hobby and into IPMS, just like we were. I think there are signs of interest there - you can see it out on the social networks - but the complication is that those 30-somethings grew up with more distractions than we had, so they were never as obsessed with modeling as we were as kids. Getting their attention is going to take new ideas and more work than it has in the past. Don

Three Rivers IPMS hosted its annual show in Pittsburgh yesterday. We had 280 odd models on the tables and a packed vendor area, our best numbers in years. I'm also happy to report a strong turnout of modelers in the under-40 age bracket - I think the reports of the death of the hobby have been greatly exaggerated! I've seen photos showing up on facebook already; I'll post here when we update the club website. Thanks to everyone who entered the contest, supported our vendors, and especially everyone that helped with judging. I hope you all had as much fun as the membership had in putting on the show! Don