BAYCON 2003: The IPMS Bay Colony Modelers annual model show, held on November 2, 2003, in South Attleboro, Massachusetts. This was my second visit to Baycon— I attended last year.
The Preliminaries:
The club has a website, with a copy of the show flyer available. The flyer included clear directions and a decent map. The registration forms were not on the website. Cost to enter was $5, which covered up to 5 models, with additional models $1 each, with a maximum entry fee of $10. Juniors paid $1 for unlimited entries. Spectators paid $2 to get in, with kids under 10 free. I would say that is very reasonable pricing!
The Venue:
The show was held at the Knights of Columbus hall in S. Attleboro, MA. There were nice signs posted along the main road to reassure drivers that they were headed in the right direction after leaving I-95.
The show was held in the main hall. The room was big enough to handle the crowd There were enough tables to easily accommodate the entries.
Lighting was good, the typical overhead fluorescents, but one spot needed better lighting. The tables with the Sci-fi and figures were against one of the walls, but the overhead lights didn’t go that close to the wall. Those tables would have benefited from some additional lighting.
The tables were on leg extenders, and were some of the highest I’ve seen. The table tops were at chest height—I’d say they were a good 4 feet off of the floor. Now, I used to applaud this, but I’ve changed my mind. I saw two attendees in wheelchairs— and the tables were above their eye level. (I will no longer complain about having to bend over to look at models on regular-height tables!)
Cookies, doughnuts, coffee, soda, chips, and hot dogs were available. They must have been OK—they sold out of dogs by 2 pm. Prices were reasonable, too. There were 4 tables with chairs, so there was room to sit and eat or just relax.
Registration:
Registration was well organized. There was plenty of space to fill out forms, and plenty of pens available. The categories were clearly posted. The show used half sheets of paper for the model form. The builders name was only collected once, on the master form, and did not go on the table with the model.
Competition:
There were 35 regular categories. Among them were 11 aircraft, 6 armor, 2 diorama, 5 auto, and 3 figure categories. There were single categories for ships, science fiction, fantasy, collections, flat art, etc. Participation was good in every category— I didn’t see any that had fewer than 4 entries.
There were no OOB awards. There was a Master’s category, for models that had earned a gold or first place in ANY contest. The rules were unclear as to whether this was optional or required. A few models with first place wins from other clubs’ events were entered in their regular category, and not as a Master, as the builder didn’t know better.
An interesting effect of this rule regarding masters is that there were quite a few more entries in that class than one normally sees at a show of this size. I was also surprised to find out that the Masters category did not award regular places, instead they awarded a “best aircraft”, “best auto”, “Best Tank”, etc. selected from all the entries in the Masters category. . (The club announced that they will do a better job of explaining the rules for the Masters Category in the future.)
This event is less friendly to Juniors that others in the region. There was only one category for all Junior (age 15 and under) subjects, plus a second “novice” category for first-timers of any age. Junior turnout was low- there were only about 5 or 6 entries, with the standard First through Fourth places awarded. So, a couple of kids went home empty handed.
Ways I would improve the handling of Juniors:
1. I think that if clubs are going to lump all the kids in just one class, that they should at least use an open system so that all the entrants get a gold, silver or bronze.
2. I think that clubs should also have a class for older teens. At this show, there were a couple of entries from teens over 15, and they weren’t up to adult standards, but were forced to compete against the adults. (An attendee told me that he thought a particular model didn’t look that great- it looked like it was built by a kid. It turned out he was right…..!
Vendors:
The vendors were in the same room as the contest, and took about 30- 40% of the floor space. I counted 18 tables of stuff. Most of the vendors had new stuff, there wasn’t a lot in the way of old kits available. I didn’t really mind, as the vendors that were there had a lot of aftermarket items, which is what I want to see. I can see and buy kits at all the local shops, but none of them can afford to have a huge selection of aftermarket items. I am personally much more likely to buy aftermarket items I can examine, so I like it when the primarily mail order vendors are there in person. All of the vendors stayed to the end-- none of them left early.
Raffle:
Like our editor, a major attraction to me is a decent raffle. The raffle was run on the usual “take your pick when your number is called” format. Ticket sales were a little unusual, at least for the New England area. Instead of the typical $1 apiece, or 6 for $5, the tickets were $.25 each or five for a dollar. My son and I usually split $20 worth of tickets, so we each ended up with 50 tickets. I asked a club member why they did it this way—it seemed that selling more tickets per dollar just made it harder on everyone. He told me that the club felt it was more important to keep costs down, than to maximize raffle profit.
When the raffle started, there were about 40 prizes on the table. There was one $70 armor kit, a few in the $20 to $30 range, and nearly all of the rest ranging in value from $15 to $3. After each of the first couple of rounds, some more moderate value kits were added to the pile, to sort of refresh the table. I’m not sure if it was planned that way, or if the additions were donations from vendors in the room.
The raffle was run with draws every half hour or so, with the first draw between 10 and 10:30, IIRC. Like most raffles, If you weren’t there by 10:30, you never saw the really good stuff- it was already gone. If a number was drawn and the prize unclaimed, the ticket was saved so that people could check to see if they had missed a draw.
This raffle suffered from the problem that many raffles have—by the time you’re down to the last 15 or so items, people have tuned out because there’s “nothing there I’d want”. It always seems like it takes forever to close the thing out. I think that the folks running GraniteCon have the best solution to this problem- in the last round, go to a format where the winner takes more than one item, so it doesn’t drag out as long.
One last observation on the raffle: I have to say, for the fourth time in as many shows that I’ve been to this fall, the NasCar decals are the last thing to go!
Judging and Awards:
Judging seemed to go OK. It started with a judges’ meeting at about 12:30, and seemed to be finished by 3:00. There was the usual appeal for judging volunteers, and it seemed that close to half of the judges were not from the host club. The judges seem to have done a good job- the crowd seemed to be happy with the results.
The awards ceremony was the only part of the show that did not go smoothly. It was supposed to have started at 3;30pm, but didn’t get underway until 4:20. Awards were given to 4th place in every category. Handing out the awards (130+) took almost an hour, finishing at about 5:15.
The host club was trying something new this year—a “Club Challenge”. The idea was that each award given had a certain number of points—I think it was 5 points for a first place, 3 for a second, 2 for a third, and one for a fourth. The intention was to total up the points earned by the attendees form the various regional clubs, and announce a club winner.
As I understand it, this was the reason for the long delay before the start of the awards. It simply turned out to be too labor-intensive to collate this info from the paper-based registration system they were using. They finally gave up and started the awards ceremony, making an announcement that the club winner would be posted on the website. (Two weeks have elapsed, and nothing has been posted yet.)
I must say I like the idea of the club challenge, and I hope they don’t give up on it. I suspect that a computer-based registration system would make easy work of tabulating the results. (Nothing complicated- maybe just entering the registrants in an Excel spreadsheet would allow them to sort by club.)
The awards themselves are very nice looking. They are wooden plaques with an engraved club logo, with a gold, silver, or bronze plate with the category and place. As I mentioned before, the awards went to Fourth place.
Report Card:
Excellent: Friendliness of host club, number and quality of models entered.
Very Good: Overall organization, vendors, food service, web site, awards
Good: Raffle, venue, awards.
OK, but could be better: Lighting
Needs Improvement: Table height, awards ceremony, clarification of Masters’ rules, support for juniors.
Bottom line is I will go again next year. An extra plus in attending was getting to meet a regular from the MM forums, “Hal the P-47 fan”, and to see his very impressive P-47s!
Club Website: