GraniteCon XI, the IPMS Granite State Modelers 11th annual Model Show, held on October 19, 2003, in Nashua, NH. This was my second visit to a GraniteCon— I attended GraniteCon X last year.
The Preliminaries:
The club has a website, with a copy of the show flyer available. The flyer included clear directions and a map, which is always a plus. The registration forms were not on the website, if you knew to look for them. Cost to enter was $5, which covered up to 5 models, with additional models $1 each. Juniors (16 and under) paid $3 for unlimited entries. Spectators paid $2 to get in.
The Venue:
The show was held at the Elks lodge in Nashua, NH. There were no signs posted along the highway or at the entrance to the event. (Like there were last year!)
The show was held in the main hall. The room was barely big enough to handle the crowd. (I spoke to a club member, who told me entries were up from 250 last year to over 310 this year.) The model tables were very crowded—they could have used another table or two, but there really wasn’t any room to add them.
Lighting was good, perhaps aided by the fact that the tables looked to be new, and were white in color. The tables were not on risers—I wish they had been, especially given how crowded they were. There were a number of near misses where a judge or spectator almost hit a model while trying to get a close up view of another subject.
Refreshments and hot lunch foods were available from the Elks’ kitchen, at reasonable prices. The one thing the room lacked was adequate seating—there were a few chairs available, but I saw a number of people sitting on the floor. The only place you could sit and eat was at the registration table.
Registration:
Registration was well fairly organized. There was plenty of space to fill out forms, and plenty of pens available. The categories were clearly posted. The show used full sheets of paper, with the bottom third folded under. This contributed to the crowding on the table, as each model also needed room to display the big sheet of paper.
Two ways that registration could be improved:
1. Don’t ask for so much information. On every form, on the hidden part, the builder is asked for name, club, and full address. By the time I got to my 6th form, my hand was cramping—that’s a lot of info to put down over and over. I like the registration approach where the full name address, club affiliation, etc. is only collected once, on the master list.
2. Put a note on the flyer to tell people that the registration forms are available on the web. I picked up a flyer at an earlier show, and neither it nor the web-based version of the flyer said anything about a registration form.
Competition:
There were 35 regular categories, and another 6 for juniors. There were 11 aircraft, 5 armor, 3 ship, 8 auto, and 4 figure categories. Participation was good in nearly every category—only a couple of them had fewer than 3 entries.
There was a “No Sweeps” rule- the most a person could win was a single place, and an Out of Box award if applicable. There was no Master’s category. Models that had placed in previous GraniteCons, or regional or national events could not be entered. This is the only contest in the area that prevented a 2nd or 3rd place winner from a previous show from being entered again. (I wonder if anyone was aware of this- it was buried in the fine print on the flyer.)
The host club should be commended for their support of juniors. They had 6 different categories for juniors: air, armor, auto, ship, dioramas, and misc. They did the junior awards first at the awards ceremony. They also had a well-provisioned “Make and Take” program going.
Vendors:
The vendors were in the same room as the contest, and took about 40% of the floor space. There were at least 8 different vendors present in the room, with a good mix of old and new stuff. Most of the detail/aftermarket stuff available seemed to be for the armor market. On the kits, there was a good mix of aircraft, armor, auto, space, figures, and ships—something for everyone! I had no trouble finding something to buy. None of the vendors left early.
Raffle:
Like our editor, a major attraction to me is a decent raffle. The raffle was run on the usual “take your pick when your number is called” format. Tickets were the typical $1 apiece, or 6 for $5. All tickets sold went o into one big bucket, and the remainders were used to draw for the big prizes. There were two big prizes, which were drawn separately at the start of the awards ceremony, after the regular raffle was complete. These were generous prizes- a $30 gift certificate to a local shop, and a $100 certificate to Squadron.
There were a lot of regular prizes, covering all the modeling subject areas. A club member told me that someone had donated a good-sized collection to the club, many of which were bagged kits. Club members went through over 80 aircraft kits, checking to be sure they could say they were complete—talk about a tedious job!! (Some kits had extras, such as aftermarket decal sheets or upgrade parts.) In addition to that, there was the usual big pile of boxed kits and books etc. There were very few of what you might consider to be a prize that nobody wants— i.e. there were no wheel sets for obscure kits.
The raffle was run continuously throughout the day, starting at 10:00am. Five or 6 numbers would be drawn every 20 minutes or so. Announcements about the time of the next drawing were made frequently, so you knew when it was safe to step outside if you wished.
The winners in the first round each got to pick one item off the table. When the second round started, winners were told to take 2 items. After a couple of rounds at (2) items, it changed to “pick 3”, and then later “pick 4”. All of the prizes were on the table at the same time, so latecomers really missed out.
If I were to run the raffle, I’d make some changes. First, I’d run it in flights, so all the choice items aren’t gone in the first half dozen draws. Second, I’d run a few more rounds of “take 1”, before going to the “take 2” policy, to give more people a shot at the better stuff.
Judging and Awards:
Judging seemed to go OK. It started with a judges’ meeting at 12:30, and the awards ceremony started at 3:30 pm. There was the usual appeal for judging volunteers, and it seemed that at least half of the judges were not from the host club. The judges seem to have done a good job- the crowd seemed to be happy with the results. (I volunteered to judge—all of the guys I worked with were very conscientious, and took the job seriously.)
The awards ceremony started with the juniors first. Every winner was called up and awarded their plaque. I know some people would prefer to see the 2nd and 3rd place awards on the table, and just the 1st winners called up, but I’m not one of them. I like it when the host club calls up everyone, and when well run (as it was here at GraniteCon) it doesn’t take that long. Awards were the standard plaques with the name of the event, year, and place. (Category was not listed on the plaque, which I think is a reasonable cost-cutting measure.)
Allow me editorialize for a moment on the topic of Out of Box rules. It seems that every club has a different interpretation on what is allowable in OOB. At one end of the scale, I’ve seen “Box Stock” mean you use what is in the box, including decals, with no reworking of parts and no additions except paint and glue. At the other end of the scale, I’ve seen OOB defined as no aftermarket resin or PE, but you can drill and carve and add rigging all you want. I wish clubs could be more consistent….
In future show evals, I’ll include a little description on what the club’s OOB rules are. (Does anyone care?) OOB rules at Granitecon tend towards the restrictive end of the scale. You can use and paint and decals you want, add masking tape seatbelts and antennas made of sprue or wire. You can drill out gun barrels, too, and that’s about it.
After the Show:
The club has a nice website, and posts pictures of all the entrants
Report Card:
Beyond Excellent: Encouragement and support of juniors.
Excellent: Friendliness of host club, overall organization, quality of models entered.
Very Good: Raffle, Food service, web site.
Good: Vendors, venue, awards.
Needs Improvement: Registration forms.
Bottom line is I will definitely go again next year. The show has become one of my favorites, primarily because of the friendliness of the hosts and the sheer number of raffle prizes.