Well what a show. First time for me and now i know why they call it the biggest scale model show in the world. Massive is the only word for it. Me and my mate Luftwoller (Guy) set of at 4.30 am for what was a four hour drive. Stopped for breakfast on the way which cost £10.00 and was cold, bargain. Got to the show and found our club stand after walking round for half an hour with our kits in our hands. First impressions was Wow this is huge. Massive hangers filled with traders and exhibitors. Three big hangers to be exact and i mean big. You definitely need the weekend for this one as you wont see all in a day. All the big names and small names were there, Dragon, Tamiya, Revell,Tristar, Airfix just to name a few. We put our stuff into the competition and set up some on our club stand and then i was gone. Time to look about. There was people from all over the world there from Japan to Canada and all over Europe. Loads from Holland and Belgium ,they seem to like competitions. Standard of models was unbelievable. I have certainly got a way to go to get to the standard of some of the stuff on show. First day done and my feet didnt half ache walking around all day on concrete floors. In the evening Me Guy and Matt from Albion Alloys went for an indian meal and i am telling you it was the best indian i have had . followed by a few bevies and having a good laugh it was turning out to be a brilliant weekend.
Day Two started with a good old English breakfast to set us up. Back to the show to take more of this modelling mayhem in I entered several models in the competition. My Schlepper with Flak and my M3 were entered in the wrong category so were not judged which was a shame. I did manage to pick up a Bronze for my Chrysler 300c and a highly commended for my Dio Timeout. Guy picked up a Bronze for his sea plane but he was talking a man about his award and the chap said well done on getting Bronze i was the judge on that category and i got Gold. He gave himself gold. That seems a bit strange. Another thing that was strange was there was loads of really really good Dio,s but the one that won was a small average one with allied soldiers on it. Most of the others were German so i am thinking something was wrong there. Dont think i am gripeing because i didnt get gold as ithere were loads much better than mine but the winner was definitely not worthy over some of the others. The aircraft were sh*t hot and is mindblowing as to the skill of some people. There was a lot of foreigners picking up the awards and when i was queing up to pick up my awards the language in the queue was definitely not English. I met the people that i review for in scalemodellingnow.com for the first time which was nice and also met loads of people from the military modelling website and we seemed to hit it of straight away. It was wierd people that i had never met were comming up to me and saying are you Andy Argent or Bodge? I will tell you if ever you get the chance to go to this show you definately want to. I bought the new Tristar 38t wth flak in the form of a marder as they had one on thier stand built out of the box and to look at it you get a really nice model straight out the box with full engine and trans on show complete with its own PE sets. It came with a free set of figures at the show as a promotion. I got a few PE sets form various things aswell and some diorama material and some modelling clay and some magazines. All were in a bag and put under our stand with everyone elses. I returned to our stand at the end of the day to find my stuff was gone. Panic set in and i said to the guys on the stand next to ours has anyone seen a white bag with my stuff in it and they all denied knowledge. When i lookesd into one of thier boxes and said, thats my stuff there. a guy had tried to pinch it. He soon gave it back and looked a bit sheepish as i was ready to take his head off and piss in his pipes. He tried to hide all the PE sets aswell Tos**r. That was the only thing that put a downer on the weekend.I have got loads of pics so if you want me to add more let me know.
