This last weekend, IPMS Butch O'Hare held their annual event. This contest is held in the southern Chicago metro area near Darien, IL and is, for many of us, the last event of the year. It was held in a Middle School's gymnasium as it has been for all the years I've attended.

Butch O'Hare provides event information on the web and also sends out mailings to those who attended the previous year. This mailing includes a flyer and an entry form for those who wish to copy it and then fill out all the info prior to arriving. Since Butch O'Hare uses the very sensible and popular 'AMPS' style judging, there are only general categories provided.

This year, the club decided to try the 'one price for all' deal and $12 got you in with as many models as you'd care to enter. This seems to be the coming thing as several events have moved to this. In one way, it encourages a large turnout and this year BOH had almost 300 models on the tables. The down side is that if you are only entering a couple of models, it seems expensive.

As I'd had my forms filled out earlier, registration was a breeze, though there were plenty of tables for folks to fill out forms and the registration folks had done this a zillion times before so either way, it was a quick process.

Next stop was the raffle table. Tickets were $1 each or 6 for $5. There were well over 200 prizes being offered and to paraphrase a comedy routine, "raffles were very, very good to me". Drawings were held four times during the day with the winner pulling a ticket from a box and then that was matched to a specific award.

Then on to the contest/vendors room. Both are in the same gymnasium and since the club had added another row of tables in anticipation of a large turn-out, things were extremely crowded. In many cases it was impossible to get down the rows in the vendors area due to the blockage by patrons (many of whom are, shall I say, large). Though I realize that the cost may be too much, the organizers really need to think about renting out the second gym to provide more room for vendors. The additional cost could well be amortized by the additional vendors as I know they ran out of tables/space somewhat early on.

While on the subject of vendors, I hate to report that there was a problem with thieves this year. At least three vendors had materials in excess of $100 stolen from each of them. It seems to be by the same group of people as they concentrated on armor kits. Perhaps it was the crowded conditions, I don't know. It is sad to think that modelers would stoop to such things as I'd always considered model builders to be honest and trustworthy. I'm not really sure what anyone can do about this aside from being more vigilant. Many suggestions were bandied about, but in the end, it is up to us all to be on the watch for things like this.

Moving on, other amenities provided by the club were sodas, coffee, donuts and pizza for those who didn't want to leave for lunch. For the rest of us, there were oodles of restaurants near by.

The judging went rather quickly as they team was able to judge almost as soon as the doors opened at 9 AM. However, they did wait until after 10 to get started (Judges meetings, you know). Each team signed off on a model once it was judged. One of my entries had no signatures on it and after the awards ceremony, when I asked if my entry had been judged, I got non-answers from the club members I questioned about it. While it is quite doubtful that it would have received an award, I would have at least liked to have had the club admit they missed it rather than giving me the run-around.

The last thing of the day was the awards ceremony. Due to their judging style, over 2/3 of the entries received awards so this part of things was rather long and drawn out. We eventually got on the road for our 5 1/2 hour trip by 5 PM and arrived home tired, but happy around 10:30 PM.

Overall, I have to say that I enjoyed the show. There were lots of goodies at the vendors table and I bought many things I didn't need. The raffle was excellent and very well run. I was saddened by the thefts as were the vendors who were hit. I don't think it will impact their return, but is something that all need to think about.

If you live within a few hundred miles of Chicago, you really should consider attending next year.