2004 IPMS Seattle Spring Show By Stephen Tontoni IPMS Seattle, IPMS USA

On Saturday, April 17, IPMS Seattle held its annual Spring Show at the Renton Community Center. Some of you might recall the center from last year; we had rented a gym and had the registration tables out in the hall and some vendors actually on the lawn. What a nightmare! I have no idea how we fit in there last year.

This year, we rented TWO gyms with the convertible wall between them stowed to make one giant room. It worked like a charm; the space was more than adequate, with plenty of room for people flow as well as model viewing. Tracy White, in designing the table plan, had something like 8 feet between tables! That's quite a bit more than the standard IPMS "two butt rule" for table spacing. On more than one occasion, I heard the comment comparing the venue to the IPMS USA Nationals. Well, this space isn't that big, but it's damn impressive.

In renting two gyms, we were taking a lot of financial risk that had many of us wringing our hands and pacing like expectant fathers right up to the show day. We did our homework though, and had raised all the fees to cover the extra expenses. Although not all the numbers are available yet, we did finish with a healthy little profit this year. As for other statistics, it seems that the number of modellers was down slightly this year while the number of spectators had inceased dramatically. There were fewer models than there were last year; apparently there were somewhere around 500 models present this year as opposed to 700 some last year. Our aircraft categories were bursting at the seams though; the intrepid judging staff had to make more splits than we were prepared to accommodate. Next year, I'd like to see more automotive and ships; c'mon people.

Mark Thompson from Fine Scale Modeller was there taking pictures of models all day long (some of us will be included in a future issue!) We also had modellers from Idaho, Portland Oregon, and Vancouver BC come in for the show. Many of these guys also joined our judging staff. It was terrific to have a mix of fine modellers like that. I'm always happy to work with a diversity of judges and they all did a great job. Come again next year!

The raffle was a high point of the day; Norm Filer, our marvelous money man, had allocated $300 to purchase goodies for the raffle. I had the thrill of doing the shopping… WOO HOO! With that seed money, we put the really good stuff on the raffle table, then members came forward with more filler to make a well-rounded table. Then, however, Skyway Model Shop, Farwest Hobbies, and Just Planes donated even more goodies; I can't thank these guys enough. They donated things that we really couldn't have afforded to buy.

To keep the big stuff on the tables longer, I went through the pile that Saturday morning, applying stickers with drawing times. Those items would not be released until the time of the sticker had passed. Drawings were every half hour from 10:00am to 3:30pm and there were about 20 items per drawing. You do the math; there was a lot of stuff there! Keeping the big stuff on the tables until later in the day proved to be very exciting; it was quite a feeding frenzy by the end of the day when the deluxe Aztek airbrush set donated by Farwest and the Trumpeter Hind from Skyway Model Shop were given away.

Will Perry did a terrific job of making last minute judging changes and coordinating the Best Of Aircraft, Armor, Automotive, Naval, and Figure categories. Jon Fincher has found his calling as a public address speaker; once he had the microphone in hand by the afternoon, there was no telling what might come out of his mouth. He had everyone chuckling, but just as importantly, he had everyone listening. Bob LaBouy had procured a number of kits from IPMS USA and sat at a Make-n-Take table all day long. For free, kids could come in and build a simple kit with adult supervision, plus get a free kit to take home. The free kits were donated by Galaxy Hobbies and by me.

If you are one who missed the IPMS Seattle Spring Show this year, make plans early to attend in 2005. The 2005 date has not yet been set, but we'll be using the same venue again. Make sure to keep an eye on our website (https://www.ipms-seattle.org) for any updates on the 2005 show.