Wings of Peace Inter-war Civil Aviation Modeling Contest
About the Wings of Peace Group:
Born of a few friends exchanging emails on the subject of their shared
interest in civil aviation of the 1920s and '30s, the Wings of Peace Yahoo
Group, who’s name was taken from historian John Stroud’s seminal
articles in Aeroplane Monthly, has steadily grown over the last two years
to become a very active group with over 130 members.
Consisting of historians and modelers, both plastic and free flight,
from around the world, the Wings of Peace Group is home to fans of airliners,
postal and cargo aircraft, racers, lightplanes and touring aircraft from
the Golden Age of aviation.
As our group has grown, so have our ambitions, from simple galleries
for our models, to book reviews and links to publications and reviews
of kits and ascessories. As all of this could not be contained within
the confines of a Yahoo Group, I began working on the Wings of Peace website,
launched in February of this year. Using websites like the WW1 Modeling
Group’s wonderful site and modeling sites like Internet Modeler
as inspiration, we hope that our website will become a hub of information
for modelers interested in this often overlooked era of aviation history.
About our Modeling Contest:
Our group recently held it’s first informal online modeling contest,
with prizes donated by group members. Announced in early November and
concluding on May 20th (the anniversary of Charles Lindbergh’s departure
from Roosevelt Field), group members had six months to complete as many
models as they wanted or could. Prizes included a one-year subscription
to Skyways, a Khee Kha Models vacuform kit and a set of Whiskey Jack Decals.
The result was 20 outstanding models showing the true variety of aircraft
from this period, from tricky resin kits to total scratchbuilds and free
flight models.
Members were asked to choose their three favorite models, using whatever
criteria they decided, and the votes were tallied, with the models receiving
the most total votes winning. Descisions were difficult to reach due to
the quality of the models and at least eight different models took the
lead at one time or another.
The votes have been tallied and I invite you all to stop by our website,
not only to see the results of our contest, but also the wonderful models
in our galleries and the beginnings of what we hope will be a resourceful
website for those interested in this exciting era of aviation history.
This website is still a work-in-progress but is updated frequently.
I would like to take this opertunity to thank the talented modelers
who made this contest a success and to thank Lars Opland of Khee Kha Models
and Gordon Parker of Whiskey Jack Decals for their generous support in
donating prizes.
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