Ron Bell

If that test means that if the nats go south you blame the EBoard and if not they get laurels, I think you may need to re-think this. From some experience in dealing with nationals and the Eboard believe me, the Eboard has very little to do with the success of a national convention. That is up to the local hosts, the convenience of the location for drive in and local attendance, the weather, the economy and a whole host of other factors, none of which the Eboard has any influence over. I've seen nationals succeed despite incompetent Eboards and visa-versa. Just because a national convention is a success doesn't really reflect much on the Eboard.

I think at the business meeting they mentioned using a consultant in regards to our social media presence, but I can't imagine that alone costing $54K.

The IUJ thing is reminiscent of "New Coke".

Dave Morrisette has a solution that would work for me at least. While people are eating first scroll on the screens all the thank yous. Then scroll all the first, second and third place winners with photos. Then announce and award just the specials, best ofs, etc. The whole banquet and awards ceremony could be done in an hour and a half or two at most. Just a thought.

I'm on an Apple, but usually I at least can see the links if not the photos in a post. My loss i guess.

Is it my system or are there no links or photos?

Email Marie at manager@ipmsusa.org for all things membership or Journal.

Now you have to build the tank transporter trailer with a tank on it! Now THAT would be impressive. Like this isn't already, right? Outstanding craftsmanship.

I was at that one but don't remember that, but you should know. Too long ago, I suppose. After 30 or so Nats, they all start to sort of blur together.

I don't recall the Juniors ever being announced before the awards presentation, but I have missed one or two along the way, including this year's. A few years back it did become common practice to announce the Junior awards first at the awards presentation.

I recall Aris once saying at a judges meeting that for many modelers who have perhaps worked for a long time on a model and then traveled at some cost to put it in the contest, this may be their only chance for a moment in the limelight and he didn't want to take that away from them, be they a first, second or third place winner. That's a nice sentiment, but now with over 700 places in the limelight to announce, it's become prohibitive time-wise and also complicates the whole presentation. We have to find a way to make the awards presentation more manageable/endurable. As to keeping the room locked during the ceremony, again it's a custom left over from years gone by. In the old days you were supposed to be able to go back to the contest room after the awards to see the winners 'in person', but that has long since gone by the wayside in the rush to pack up. In addition, closing the contest room allows for the placing of the awards by the models uninhibited by a milling crowd and having it locked during the ceremony lessens the chance of awards being inadvertently moved or possibly even stolen. The problem with letting people pack up earlier is that no matter how early you allow it, some will want to do it earlier and then eventually you will wind up with a half empty contest room on Saturday so anyone coming for the day, and it's usually non-IPMS-members and/or local looky-loos, don't get their full money's worth. Dave's idea about scrolling the 2nd/3rd places winners could maybe be extended to running a scroll of ALL the winners excepting the specials and Best Ofs during the banquet. Photos of the winners could be included I suppose. Then only the specials and Best Ofs would be actually announced. I'm sure there are many variations of this theme that can be put forth, but putting them here won't be very productive. Put them to the 2nd VP and the people organizing the Hampton and Ft. Wayne shows as they are the ones that can actually effect change.

This is an extract from a document that dates from 2014. It was updated later but I can't find any copies of that. It was part of a packet of info I used to send to all who expressed interest in bidding that contained the info below along with the operating parameters, a statistical summary of all conventions going back over 20 years and copies of the last two successful bids. All of this has been "lost to the ages" somewhere along the way. "TO BID OR NOT TO BID There was a time, not long ago, when bidding to host a national convention took a major financial commitment from a chapter along with a lot of advance planning and "boots on the ground" during the show. Over the past few years, IPMS/USA has been taking some steps to ease those burdens and make running a national convention a little less daunting for a chapter. First off, if you are in doubt whether your city or town has a facility that has sufficient space and are leery of getting involved in haggling with hotels and/or convention centers, IPMS/USA has linked up with a convention site locator service, Hospitality Performance Network. (Ed. Note 7/24/24. This service is no longer in existence.) This service will search out the venues in your city for you, give you a report back on the attributes of each and help you in any contract negotiations. There is no charge to you for these services. All youneed do is contact: Valerie Roach Senior Account Executive Hospitality Performance Network 480-998-9770 EXT: 251 vroach@hpnglobal.com Financially, the chapter does not need to worry. The National organization assumes all financial liability for the convention and handles all monies. That means the local host/s do not have to pay any bills/deposits/invoices as they are all paid by the National Office. Arrangements are even made for a sort of "petty cash" fund for the host to take care of minor purchases. As the convention has grown, just managing all the information that flows in and out became a large task. IPMS/USA now provides a convention management system that will organize all that data. Who is registered, for what tours, how many banquet tickets, what vendors are there. It can track all this and produce reports that can make a chapter's tasks much easier. In addition, tech support for the software is provided as the program was written by an IPMS member. IPMS/USA provides liability and event cancellation insurance to cover the show, so that is taken care of. However, there are some requirements for this insurance. Make sure you read them in the Operating parameters BEFORE you agree to anything. No one in your chapter need sign any contracts. That can all be handled at the National level. As to the model contest, you don't need to worry about providing rules, categories, judges or even an model registration system. That's all taken care of by the National Contest Committee. So, what does a chapter need to be concerned with? Let's take a look. Running one of these shows takes a commitment from the entire membership of a chapter. If they are not behind it, it just won't work. Usually a group of enthusiastic members gets together and decides to bring it up to the rest of the chapter. It is up to this group to convince the rest of the chapter that a national convention is do-able. If this 'interest group' is large enough (10-15), you have the makings of a core committee to get started. Philosophically, read the bid preparation and convention operation parameters thoroughly and understand them. Do not agree to submit a bid until everyone on your committee is on-board with these parameters. This is IPMS/USA's convention, not yours. You are to be the host, but that does not mean you are 100% in charge. Make sure you know where the limits are and what you are responsible for before you get into this undertaking. Sources of information about possible venues in your area include the Chamber of Commerce and your Visitors/Convention Bureau. A convention bureau usually has a guide to all the area hotels/venues with square footages and facilities listed as well as phone numbers. This can go along way to eliminating venues with inadequate space or may give you alternate non-hotel sites you had not thought about such as colleges and universities. In any case, you need to have a site that will allow you to have ample space to do the show. Don't try to squeeze it in. Check the figures that are provided by the National Office to get an idea of the space needed for the contest room, vendors' area and banquet room. Each of these should be separate from the others. You cannot have any room do double duty, such as chasing vendors out to serve a banquet. Make sure you have all the room you need and have a few other rooms available to add, "in case". If the venue is a hotel, try to get the space free for a certain number of roomnights guaranteed, but make sure the guarantee is reasonable because if you don't meet it, itcan cost you dearly. Again, consult the information available from the E-Board for past trends.Remember, to help even further you can use the site locator service named above.If at all possible, it is best to use only one hotel that can accommodate everyone to avoidoverflow housing in different hotels, but it is not required. Get the hotel/s to put it all in writingbefore you go to present your bid. You should not sign anything. That National does that. Makesure you know about all the "extras", like table rental, setup and draping charges and any otherextraneous fees. These can really add up. For example, a set up and draped table rented fromone hotel for the run of a show cost $30. However, it was found at one convention that tablerental could be out-sourced for $5 per table for the entire show. As the hotel would set up anddrape the rental tables for $5 each, it only cost $10 a table for the show for a savings of $20 pertable and we use a lot of tables. In addition, make sure you know whether any charges are "perday", "per unit used", "run of the convention" or any other such rate. Read the fine print.Before you settle on a contract, have a “legal eagle” look it over carefully. If you don’t have onein your club, it could be worth a couple hundred dollars (out of a $50-80,000 budget) to makesure there are no problems. Many venues will try to steer you to times they have a lull inbusiness, such as the July 4th weekend, even if other weekends are already open. If at allpossible, try to avoid this weekend. While it usually does incur lower costs, traditionally it alsoproduces lower attendance. While you are negotiating, do not assume you are going hat inhand. You are potential business with a proven track record. Be a little assertive when it comesto prices, perks and other special considerations. Prices have been known to drop magically.Make sure you understand any rebate/comp room deals your venue offers. Some will give youthe facility for “X” room nights, others will give you a credit per room toward the price of thefacility. If you have more than one hotel contributing, what is the price difference between hotelsbecause the cheaper hotel will sell out first and produce more room nights, but they might beworth less toward the price of the venue.As you plan, to get an idea on your attendance, average the registrations from the last twoshows from your area. In addition, draw concentric circles around your venue at 8 hour, 12 hourand 16 hour drives. Drive-ins are all possible from these distances, but the numbers do drop offat each line. It can also be a guide as to where to place your publicity.Tours are a nice plus, but are not necessary. If you have a particularly attractive site for a tour,then go for it. However, don’t just put together a bunch of tours to second-rate sites just to havetours. That could actually detract from a bid rather than add to it. A WORD ON SPACE REQUIREMENTS Of course, you can fall back on the data provided to you by the national organization, but here’ssome numbers for you to chew on as well. They are only approximates and guidelines, so usethem to guide your planning, not rule it.The five year average for contest room tables is 270, 96”x30” tables. That is 20 square feet pertable, or 5,400 total square feet of tabletop. If you figure in an accompanying minimum 8 footaisle for every 2 tables (as they are usually back to back), that's an 8X8 foot space, or 64square feet. Times 135 (270 tables arranged back to back) = 8,640 sq/ft of aisle. Added to the5,400 sq/ft of table top and you get 14,040 sq/ft needed for a contest room.You can play the same game with the vendors' area. The five-year average is 294 tables. That's5,880 sq/ft of tabletop. In general, these are usually arranged with two rows of tables with atleast a 4 ft space between them for the vendor's chairs, coolers, whatever. That's 4ft X 8ft = 32sq/ft for every two tables, or 32sq/ft X 147 (294 tables in groups of 2) = 4,704 sq/ft of vendors’personal space. Multiply a 64 sq/ft aisle like we got in the contest area for every two tables (64X 147) in the vendors’ area and you get 9,408 sq/ft of aisle. To summarize, that is 5,880 sq/ft oftabletop, 4,704 sq/ft of space between tables, and 9,408 sq/ft of aisle. That is 19,992 sq/ft ofvendors’ space. This is a minimum. The configuration of your room/s will cause variances dueto poles, doors, strange floor plans, etc. Also remember they don’t all HAVE to be in one room.Several rooms that add up to this could accomplish the same thing given the appropriate tablearrangement. Some fire marshals will also require 10 foot aisles to meet local fire codes. Be aware of what your local fire codes require when making your room selections.So, you need around 15,000 sq/ft of contest room (one room) and 20,000 sq/ft of vendors’space (can be in multiple rooms) for a “minimum” total of 35,000 sq/ft. In addition to this, thereshould be a room separate from all this space that can accommodate the awards ceremony ineither theater or banquet seating. Figure around 300 for the banquet, but remember almosteveryone will come to the awards presentation, so you will need extra seating. While notrequired, it is a nice convenience and should be made available as you are able.Remember, a banquet is NOT REQUIRED BY IPMS/USA. An awards ceremony is, the banquetis not. Usually, the venue has a food/drink minimum purchase requirement and a banquet is theeasiest single way to meet this requirement. However, the price of these banquets has reachedabove $50 in some cases and causes attendance to drop. You might want to consider someother more creative ways of meeting any food/drink requirement. UNDERTAKING A BID There are three parts to undertaking a bid, the actual preparation of the bid, thesubmission of the bid and the formal bid presentation session at the conventiontwo years before the convention being bid on. PREPARATION OF THE BID The bid itself is not meant to be major project. It is a summary of what you intendwith the necessary accompanying statistics and contracts. In a limited amount ofspace, your bid must present ALL the pertinent data, so prepare thoroughly.Physically your bid can be only ten pages in length (excluding attachedcontracts), should be organized, easy to understand and should have some ofyour group's "personality". The 2nd Vice President will send you the last twosuccessful convention bids as examples of what is needed. In yours there mustbe: - A completed Pre-Convention Projections form. (Included below) - Copies of any contract/s (unsigned) for facility usage - A general description/outline of what you intend to do, - A preliminary budget - A list of the officers, such as the chairman, treasurer, vendor coordinator, registrar, and contest chairmen and any other key personnel. - Some information about your city. It doesn't need special bindings and/or covers. The E- Board is more interested in what's INSIDE the bid. In your planning, be conservative. You may not be so fortunate as to get themost people or models ever at a show. Plan to cover your expenses using thedata the National gives you as to what has happened in the past. Don't set out to"make money". The point of these shows is not to lose money. Making money isnice, but is not the main purpose. This isn't a business. The only way you couldmake money would be by charging the members more and if you charge toomuch, they won't come and then you won't make anything!Don't set out to "one up" all the shows in the past. At this stage, unless you havedone this before, you have no idea what will be involved just to put this thing on,so be conservative. A word about that data the national will send you. Be careful.Don't use data that is too old (more than five years) and try to use data fromconventions in your "neck of the woods" to get the best comparisons. Do somepreliminary event planning and have your major committee heads in place. Youmust also have an outline budget ready to give the E-Board an idea of what youhave in mind. Let them know you gave all aspects of the show consideration. SUBMISSION OF THE BID To enable the E-board to more carefully study your bid, you need to submit it tothe 2nd Vice President at least two months before the formal bid session at theconvention. It is preferable to submit it electronically via e-mail. It can then moreeasily be distributed to the rest of the E-board for study. If they have anyquestions, you will be contacted in advance of the convention and be able torespond. This process makes the actual bid presentation session at theconvention much more efficient and thorough. THE BID PRESENTATION SESSION The first thing to note is that you only have fifteen minutes to present yourbid. Then there will be a brief period for any questions. The bid presentationsession at the convention is relatively informal, but do not assume you can just"wing it". To IPMS this is THE big show and they take it very seriously and youshould too. Bring about 30 hard copies of the bid to the bid session. Don't give acanned convention bureau presentation. Tell how you intend to run the show,who will be doing it, what their experience is, what planning is already under wayand what space you have to do it all in. Don't think that a good 'dog and ponyshow' about "Vacation Heaven USA" will win the day, there must also besubstance. At the bid presentation session, have the best presenter in your groupdo it. The chairman needs to be there to help, but let the "mouth piece" be thefront man. It is important that you make the best possible impression. Peoplbelieve what they see and if they see a disjointed, disorganized presentation, thatis how they will assume you will approach the entire project. Don't give them anyreason to doubt your abilities. In addition, have photos, slides or a video of thevenue as they will answer many questions without them having to be asked andthey can also make explanations easier. In this order, you've got to sell: 1. Your club's organization, experience, resources and commitment for the duration of the process. 2. Your venue. 3. Your budget 4. Your program (speakers, tours, etc.) 5. Your city Note that the city usually only enters the equation with regards to its accessibilityand/or as a tiebreaker. Successful conventions have been held in smaller cities and not-so-successful ones have been held in big cities and visa-versa.Accordingly, spend most of your time on the first five topics.Remember, you only have fifteen (15) minutes to do all of this.Finally, if you are not awarded the convention, and you have questions as to"why", ask the 2nd Vice President. He will give you the reasons. You may not agree with them, but he will share them with you."

There used to be a procedure where any potential bidder had to submit their bid a certain number of weeks before the convention so the Eboard could evaluate the bid and ask any detail questions and get answers BEFORE the actual presentation, thereby avoiding a lot of fuss and feathers during the actual bid session. If you hadn't submitted your bid in time, too bad. Well, that went by the wayside as beggars can't be choosers and if you only get one bid one week before the show, you go with what you got. Heck, there was even one unannounced beforehand that showed up at the conventions and informed the Eboard that they wanted to bid. (They didn't get the nod, by the way.) I wasn't at the bid session (nursed and sat through too many of those over the years) so I can't speak to the Ft. Wayne bid, but I have to assume that the Eboard looked it over quite thoroughly before they decided. It's not the first time we've had only one bid but they have all produced fine conventions.

This was started as a "kill time" model while paint/stuff dried on my main project, but I got into it and I think it came out pretty well. The underside parts are a bit fiddly and the whole hood assembly took wedges and clamps to get it in place with no gaps. Some of the seats had sink holes in the cushions, so I covered them up with the rifle and musette bag. The only additions I made were to add glazing to the windscreen which you can't see, the props holding up the windscreen armored cover and the tilt hoop attached to the rear. I also substituted two other 30 cal. MGs as the kit one was rather basic looking. It's painted as a vehicle used by the 2nd NZ division artillery in Italy in '43. It's not perfect, not by far, but looks nice in my armoured car collection.

I'm not an official, but at all past conventionsI you had to have the actual forms as they are kept for recording purposes. Can you email them to a friend who does have a printer who can then print them off for you?

I have used and continue to use Elmer's. Works fine as long as the part has no stress on it.

Generally, the NCC adheres to a sort of three year parameter. They'll 'watch' a category for three years and monitor the number of entries. As our conventions move around the country, that way the possibility of a particular local slant is minimized. If they see that the number of entries grows and looks to keep growing, they may add and/or split a category to accommodate that growth. However, sometimes new categories are added/deleted without undergoing this process when other factors intervene. The NCC will be having their annual meeting at Madison. If you will be there you can attend and see how all this works.

The Eboard doesn't handle such matters. It's done by the Head Category judges and the Chief Judge. Contact Phil Perry at ncc@ipmsusa.org. and given that the national model contest is only a few weeks away, don't expect a quick response as I imagine Phil will be a little preoccupied.

This represents one of the M-13/40's used by the Aussies during the Siege of Tobruk in 1941. It's a very nice kit, simple to build and therefore fun and makes up into a nice miniature.

It's looking good. As to your Polly S spraying woes, I wonder if using a retarder, such as Tamiya's, would keep the paint flowing evenly. I know that one paint's formula may not work with another's but it might be worth a test shot on some scrap or an old junker model. Just a thought.

Hasagawa, Hobbycraft and Revell all did 1/32 P-40's. However the Hasagawa and Hobbycraft ones all came after 2000, so built in the early 70's it's probably the Revell one. Go on Scalemates and search Revell 1/32 P-40 and you'll see all the releases, and there were many.

Thanks for that info, but while that gizmo keeps the paint 'wet' between sessions, what about the paint on the figure. Doesn't that dry and if so then its unblendable. I probably should just watch some videos on it being done as I am a visual learner.

Excellent work, but please tell me how you "blend" acrylics? Don't they dry too fast and once they dry you can't redissolve them to get them to blend. What's the secret?

Beautiful. Love that aircraft. Now do the 1/72 Monogram one with the Starfighter details and have a complete set!

Nice work and not over "weathered", which bugs me. Interesting in that it is right hand drive. Here's a similar vehicle in1/72 that I converted from the JB Landrover kit. Your's has much finer detail, of course. I especially like the MGs.