Anyone else going this year?
hey that’s great news. is that in indianapolis this year ?
It’s in Auburn IN, about 2 hours north of Indy. It’s being held again at the WW2 Victory museum. Admission to the convention gets you free rein of the museum for the weekend too. Doors open to the public 11AM on Friday April 23 although Thursday volunteers can enter their models Thurs night and those attending the Friday morning judging session get to go to the vendors room at 10AM for early shopping.
Here’s the flyer http://amps-armor.org/ampssite/conventions/flyers/2010_AMPS_Show_Flier_tracks.pdf
Here’s the link to pre-registration http://www.amps-armor.org/ampssite/registration/default.aspx
Having North America’s largest armor-only show in the Midwest is nice for those of us who live in neighboring states. Plan to come – it’ll be a great time had by all. Finescale always is a huge support and they’ll be down in force again, snapping pics for the magazine.
I remember my very first AMPS Show too. Tons of armor focused vendors, great cameraderie at the contest tables. Great seminars, tons of stuff to see. Come once and you’ll be addicted.
I am going for sure! It is only 2 hours drive for me. Hopefully I get to meet you guys if you are going. DON’T BE SHY… I may be deaf but I don’t bite! I am trying to convince my wife into going with me too… it helps if she can because she is hearing.
Auburn is home to several interesting museums. If you or she is into cars, you MUST check out the ACD museum (google it). It’s fantastic. I highly recommend it to all AMPS attendees – even if you’re not into cars (like me), you’ll still be blown away.
This year we’ve implemented online registration. Check it out
http://www.amps-armor.org/ampssite/registration/default.aspx
The first 100 pre registrants get a free head set from New World Miniatures.
Crossing my fingers that nothing pops up in my schedule, if nothing unexpected pops up then I’ll be attending on Saturday…hopefully.[:)]
Are their any seminars and etc. scheduled for Saturday? Is their still plenty of stuff to buy at the vendors?
I went to Atlanta AMPS a few weeks ago a took home a Gold, 2 Silver and a Bronze…not nearly the turnout as last year but still had a good time, especially as the Atlanta Figure Modelers had their show going on at the same time…
I was pleased with my awards but debated an AMPS Judge about the AMPS “sweeps” rule. He stated that you were awarded the highest medal for any given category you entered, so if you entered 10 tanks in the AFV Category and the highest medal you received was a Gold, you would NOT receive any more medals in that category regardless of the rest of your models’ merits. I told him that it discouraged entering more than one model per category and he conceeded my point. I told him that next year it would make things easier on me because I would bring less, but that there would be less overall entries for the folks to look at on the tables because the current system only encourages you to bring “your best” to the show in each category…
MR:Congrats on the awards. The AMPS rules incent the modeller to grow in his/her craft, not to particularly so they can garner multiple medals. You’re correct about the medals limitation. If one had entered 5 Shermans, all gold award winning entries and a single Panther garnering Silver award points, at the awards ceremony, the modeller would be awarded a single gold medal for the Allied tracked category and later be called up and given a single Silver for the Axis tracked category.
However the modeller would also know that his/her peers found five of the six entries to be worthy of Gold level points. AMPS believes this is the heart of why we gather – to see each others’ work, to foster camaraderie, to critique and encourage one another – not to see how many plaques/medals one walks away with at the end of the day. For that, other contests are available.
There’s no debate here. In my reading of the rules, they encourage personal growth and not reward outward awards chasing. If that then leads people to bring less entries, then that’s fine. If they choose to not bring “lesser” work in a category, frankly it’s their loss. We aren’t ignorant that people like awards and recognition. But that’s the balance we try to attain. We believe the non-competitive nature of our judging system fosters community and improved skills among the armor modelling community.
I’m bringing seven entries to the AMPS Nationals in April. Three will be in the Allied Tracked category, 2 will be in the Axis tracked category, 1 in scratcbuilt, 1 in wheeled vehicles. My max medal count might be four. But I’ll have seven sheets of comments from my fellow modelers.
Again, congrats on your awards.
I respectfully disagree, and even the judges I spoke to said, “Well our motto is bring your BEST, not your collection…”. To me, it just discourages people from bringing in more things for everyone to enjoy and those two judges agreed with me. In fact, they told me that each of them only brought ONE model to each contest for that very reason. They called it the AMPS “no sweeps” rule, but that doesn’t make sense. IMO, if you bring a model and it meets a certain level it should get an award. Since it is the AMPS system you aren’t taking anything away from another modeler by doing that, just recognizing ALL of the work brought in…are the medals that expensive?
If you bring a model and it meets a certain level, it DOES get an award – the formal recognition that said model achieved a certain point level under the AMPS judging system. The accompanying bauble is secondary. In my previous example, you can’t tell me a person who achieves five RECOGNIZED Gold models at an AMPS event isn’t going to feel pretty good? I admit: getting five gold medals in hand would enhance that feeling, sure. But the award is the recognition and acknowledgment of your peers: not the medal.
I don’t have 2009 numbers but 472 out of 547 models achieved an award at the 2008 AMPS Nationals. I believe we handed out roughly 100 or so medals. But each of those 472 kits was a winner that day.
But like I said earlier: i completely understand the desire to receive a tangible award right then, right there. Given the time and cost structure of our judging system, it’ll be difficult to expand as per your suggestion MR.
“Bring your best, not your collection…”
-Atlanta AMPS Head Judge, 2010
They can’t do sweeps anyway, they would have to have thousands of medals if they allowed sweep because you cant tell how many models would be entering the competition.