IPMS Will Cook, The Contest X, September 11 2004
After a long summer of no contests, it was nice to get back into attending, though the fall will be a bit more sparse than last year with several clubs not holding them.
IPMS Will Cook is in the Chicago Area over near the Indiana border. For us, about a 4+ hour drive. The club had registration forms and contest info available on their website. I had also either picked up this info at earlier events or they mailed it to me so after making copies of the entry forms, I was set for a quick check in. The forms are very good and all builder personal info was kept by the registrar and a separate portion of the form placed with the model. There was a good smattering of categories and some that were most unusual, including one for floatplanes and one for single engine multi-place aircraft. A bit more on this later.
Registration fee was $10 for all the models you could bring. The club also has a no sweeps rule so that you have three happy winners in each category.
The contest is held in a school cafeteria and there was plenty of room for models. The display tables were elevated so that it kept the entries away from small hands! Vendors occupied all four walls around the room with the display tables on the inside. There was a lot of room between tables and between the tables and vendors. It only seemed crowded as most modelers are not exactly anorexic!
The club offered do-nuts and soft drinks so we were not lacking refreshments. There were also a number of folding chairs so we had a place to sit if we wished. When lunch time came around, the area has lots of restaurants within a very short distance.
There are three reasons I go to contests. One is to meet old friends and make new ones. The host club is very friendly and maintained a pleasant atmosphere. The second is the raffle. Will Cook had a very good one with the standard buck a ticket or 6 for a fiver. They also had a 'super raffle' for some high priced kits at $3 a ticket. Raffles were held once an hour, each item had a ticket on it, and the winner picked a ticket from a box to determine what the award was. All the awards were good stuff and not the junk or catalogues that I've seen at a few other venues over the year. If I were to make a suggestion, it would be to limit the 'super raffle' to one prize per winner. Of the five awards, it seemed to me that three people were the recipients. Not a really big deal, but I did hear some grumbling about it. The third reason is to see neat models and there were a bunch of them there.
Judging went quickly and it seemed they were finished well ahead of the awards ceremony time. Now I say this every time I have to cool my heels awaiting the awards ceremony, but I feel that if judging is done early, the awards ceremony should be moved up commensurately. By late in the afternoon, most of the vendors have packed up and gone, we've seen the entries a dozen times or more, and those of us with hundreds of miles to drive are anxious to get on the road home.
Once the awards ceremony was underway, it moved at a good pace. This is as much thanks to not having a zillion categories. At least one was split due to the number of entries. Now to something I thought was a bit odd. You recall that I noted some odd categories. Well apparently some club members picked them and sponsored the category. Nothing odd about that, but it seemed to me that both members won the categories they sponsored! There were quite a few raised eyebrows on this one, I can tell you. I have sponsored special awards myself and as a result, did not bring entries for that award. Just seemed a bit strange to do so. Just my opinion, mind you. The awards themselves were very nice and so were the Best Of for the various major categories. I was surprised to have won one of those and it is quite a nice award. Unusually, there was no Best of Show or People's Choice as I've seen at other shows.
Overall, it was an excellent show. The organizers were friendly and did a bang-up job getting things going without any glitches. The judging was fair as our small club did quite well against the locals. I also like the idea of one price for all the models you can bring. It helps fill up the tables and I brought stuff I normally wouldn't have if it were a 'pay for each piece' sort of things. I also applaud the use of no-sweeps rules. In my opinion, the more people that win stuff at an event, the more happy people you have and the more likely they will return the next year. I know I will and if you are in the Chicago-land area, I can recommend it to you for a fun day.