IPMS Butch O'Hare, 8 November, 2003
Butch O'hare's show is the last one of the year for me as the weather is too cold for most clubs to want to hold shows much past this time of year around here. A long drought until March!
I got a flyer from the club that showed the route there, gave pricing info, and listed special awards. Categories are not a concern with this event as they do AMPS or Modified Chicago rules. This means that a model is based on a set standard and there is no 1,2,3 as with most shows. Up side is that there are more 'winners' of Bronze, Silver and Gold awards. Down side is that the club spends basically all day judging, there are a lot of awards to get, and the awards ceremony is generally longer than most. More on this later. Their website allegedly had information on the show as well, but the webmaster is not that knowledgeable when it comes to .html and as a result, the info was not obtainable via the web.
Doors for normals opened at 9 AM. It was $7 for the first model and a buck for each one. This is a lot more reasonable, especially considering the number of awards to be offered, and other clubs should look into adopting a more reasonable pricing structure for entries if they are charging much more. Since the club's flyer also included an entry form, that was copied and already made out prior to leaving so registration was but a formality. They have a two-part form so that the modeler's name is not on the part that accompanies the model. I overheard someone complain that they couldn't see who built the model from the form. Apparently that is normal to proudly have the builder's name on the form that goes with the model. No home cooking here, eh? Amazing!
The raffle table was next. Raffle items were down from previous years, but were well run every hour. It was 6 tickets for $5. Each item had a ticket number on it and the winner drew from a large box. I did poorly this year, but that is the chance one takes with raffles! The venue itself is a school with two gymnasiums. In one there were refreshments being sold and this included hot dogs and other lunch items. A bit pricey at $1 a can for soda, but otherwise not bad. There were lots of restaurants within a mile or two so finding a nice place for lunch wasn't a problem.
The other gymnasium held the vendors and the contest tables. Tables were raised from the floor on small sections of tubing which kept models from little fingers. The room was packed with vendors and there were oodles of great bargains to be found. It also made for a rather crowded room. In my opinion, there wasn't enough room between tables as I was constantly being bumped into them. I also found most people to be quite rude and rarely heard an "excuse me" after being propelled into a table by a passerby. I'm quite surprised that there were not a lot of broken models. If the club was able to get both gyms, then they should have put vendors in one room and contest tables in another as things really were crowded.
Lighting was fairly good and there were chairs around for folks to sit in should they be so inclined, though things were crowded and there weren't always enough chairs. This was a similar situation to last year, though I don't recall the space between tables as being so small. If you had two people looking at models opposite each other, there wasn't enough space for a person or two to get by, especially when you consider that most modelers are not 2% body fat and 150 lbs!
The awards ceremony started promptly at 4 PM. The club gives out metal medallions that are nicely done. They are generic in that there is no date on them, so the club is able to mass order a lot of these to keep down costs, an important feature when one is giving out so many. The basic categories were planes, automotive, armor, space/sci-fi, and juniors. No need for subcategories with the style of judging they did. The bronze and silver awards were announced three at a time which helped to speed things up. Gold and special awards were announced separately. During this time the vendors were packing up and the doors to the outside were left open, allowing freezing air to come in and make things quite uncomfortable. The ceremony was over in less than 45 minutes so that we were on the road again by 5 PM after 8 hours at the contest.
This is always one of the best shows of the year. Unlike last year, the special awards seem to be well spread out amongst the entrants, which is good. The vendors are always top rate and I bought lots of nice, cheap kits, though there were always some I was unable to find.
Really, about the only thing I could suggest to the organizers is to provide more space between tables (even if it means using separate rooms for the contest and vendors) and perhaps keep the back doors closed until after the awards ceremony. Less expensive sodas would be nice too. They can't do anything about rude people.
An outstanding event and one I always look forward to.