IPMS-Seattle Spring Show 2000

By Jim Schubert
Photos by Dave Clark

As usual our 2000 show was held at the National Guard Armory in the Interbay district of Seattle on Saturday March 11. There were 582 entries in the contest and about 200 models on the display tables; a turn out influenced, no doubt, by Contest Chairman Andrew Birkbeck's sterling efforts at publicizing the event and soliciting all those door prizes - over 200. For every model entered or displayed, up to ten, participants received a door prize ticket. Drawings were held regularly throughout the day and each winner got to pick their prize. At the end of the day all the drawn and undrawn tickets were remixed and two drawn for the grand prizes - two Aztek airbrush outfits in custom walnut cases. Each entrant in the Junior categories was given two entry prizes of their choice at registration and each was also given a ribbon for participating. This attention to juniors is part of our ongoing effort to attract new blood and to make these future Nationals winners feel good about their early experiences in competing.

This year instead of the traditional ribbons for category winners we had very nice certificates of award for 1st, 2nd and 3rd places. Norm Filer did the design and production work on these attractive awards. Terry Moore arranged for the caterer who supports his company's events to be on-site for the day offering hot and cold food and beverages. Because of the Armory's out-of-the-way location this was a real convenience to everyone. I quite enjoyed my German sausage with sauerkraut, etc.

About 15 of the usual suspects turned up Friday afternoon, making light work of the big job of setting up for the contest. The only problem we had was that the paper table cloth, which came on lonnng rolls could not be torn. It had to be cut and no one had either a large knife or scissors of any kind. This minor detail caused a lot of frustration for those dressing the tables and a lot of laughs for those who were not. Chairman Birkbeck was also very successful in recruiting more vendors than usual, to the extent that we had to have two vendor rooms instead of the usual one. I spent about $60. How did you do?

It appeared to me that the overall quality of the entries this year was at least as high as usual and there were many more than usual individual models that were truly outstanding. This made the judges' jobs even harder than usual, but then that's why we pay them so well. I hope to see a fair number of these models at the Nats in Dallas in July; they are certain winners.

The same gang of usual suspects (about 20 this time) struck down the show, packed and removed everything and cleaned up the Armory before repairing to Louie's in Ballard for an attitude-adjustment (mine was a Martini), dinner and a review of the day along with the usual swapping of lies, tall tales and horror stories. On March 28 the Contest Committee met for a full review of all aspects of the contest - what worked, what didn't, who did we offend, what can we do better for the Northwest Scale Modelers' contest at the Museum Of Flight June 3?

Some of the strength of our Seattle events flows from the long continuity of the organizing team (Those "usual suspects"), the linkage of the IPMS and NWSM contests to reinforce one another and the post-contest reviews, which make each successive contest, be it IPMS or NWSM, bigger, better and more smoothly running. But the greatest strength we have is in the large body of enthusiastic, dedicated, hard working, excellent modelers who are the members of IPMS-Seattle and the NWSM. Our Pacific Northwest is truly a modeler's heaven: there are active and enthusiastic IPMS chapters in Portland, Yakima, Spokane (they have the Regional this year June 17), Tacoma, Whidby Island, Bellingham, Mount Vernon, Vancouver BC, and Seattle.

All the winners and judges are listed here. But it is not just contestants and judges who make a contest happen. Our Contest Chairman, Andrew Birkbeck cannot be praised enough for the excellent job he did in making it all happen. He organized the whole thing, solicited door prizes and sponsorships and coordinated the myriad specific activities assigned to others. Jill Moore had a great team of registrars to ensure that all entrants were well received and helped. They were: Brian Cahill, Norm Filer, Bill Johnson, JoAnne Ludwig, Will Perry and others who volunteered ad hoc. Andrew Bertschi and Keith Laird, with the help of Nick Ferruiolo, were kept running all day taking care of the Junior door prizes and the main door prizes drawings and distributions. Robert Allen ran the contest room with the able help of: John Amendola, Matthew Burchette, John Cate, Lamar Fenstermaker, Jon Fincher, George Hasse, John Frazier, Steve Holmes, Les Knerr, Donald Lake, Paul Ludwig, Don MacBean, Steve McKinnon, Mike Medrano, Paul Peterson, Scott Taylor, Stephen Tontoni, Tracy White, David Whitmore, Paul Youman and others dragooned as required.

Thank you all for making it happen. Now we've got to get to work on that NWSM contest; June 3 is nearly upon us. The Contest Committee for NWSM is the same as for IPMS and we hope that everyone who participated, in any way, in the IPMS event will do the same for NWSM in June.