IPMS Gateway Invitational. 15 September 2007
For the second year in a row, IPMS Gateway held an invitational show in a church just east of St. Charles, MO. For me, this was a leisurely one hour drive instead of the usual 3.5 to 5 hour slogs to get to a model contest and it was nice to awaken when it was light outside. I decided to vend this year as I did last so did not get to spend much time looking at the models, though I did get to photograph most of them.
The club had directions and a flyer on its website for those who wished to get information ahead of time. The club charged $2 to get in the door and if you wished to participate in the contest, it was another $5 for all the models you cared to enter. This seems fair enough to me, though I did hear some complaints about 'paying twice'. Daglo wrist bands were given to those entering through the door and I have to say that I'd much rather have these than a black or red ink stamp on my hand.
The venue was fine for vendors as they were in the gymnasium and this was well lit, had plenty of room in which to move about and thanks to the unseasonably cool weather, was just a delightful temperature inside.
The model room was in the meeting room as last year. The displays were on round tables, which seemed fine to me. This room was not very well lit compared to the gymnasium, but was adequate for its purpose. I can tell when a room isn't well lit as it takes a while for my auto-focus camera to lock on. The awards were beauties and I'm sure that Gateway spent a goodly amount of money on them.
There was a spot just down the stairs from the venue which had more tables and chairs so that entrants and visitors could not only fill out forms, but relax if their feet got tired. The club sold snacks and sodas, which was probably my biggest comment from last year. There was also a raffle, but it was not a very good one and hopefully next year will be better. The club needs to hit on vendors to help flesh this out. It seems as if they did not do this as no one asked me for a contribution to it.
Personally, I did well taking an award in three of the four categories I entered, so I was not only surprised but pleased with the results. The categories were somewhat broad as, for instance, there was no civil/commercial category for aircraft. It was explained to me that if I wanted to sponsor such a category, they'd put one in. OK. Same for Auto Competition for which there was one category. So many had entered that category that they needed an additional table. I was quite pleased to see such great participation in the automotive section as this area is generally quite lacking in most events.
As I was not at the awards ceremony (I was packing up), I did not hear if they had split that, but my gut feeling is that they did not. The rules did state that there were no sweeps, something that I and many other approve of for model contests. I'm not sure of the number of entries, but I took nearly 200 photos so it had to be more than that as I didn't photograph everything.
Overall, an excellent event. If you are able to attend next year's (and I'm sure there will be one about the same time of year), I can highly recommend attending as it was a superb event. Thanks to being so close, I was home by about 5PM, while it was still light out for a change!