IPMS Roscoe Turner, Indianapolis, IN 10 March, 2007

By Scott Van Aken

IPMS Roscoe Turner's annual event was held in a Middle School this year, one of several places it has been over the years, and in my opinion, the best.  I had received a flyer well in advance and knew the location well so it was really a matter of copying a few entry sheets and awaiting the event. There were complete rules, categories and entry sheet on their website www.ipmsroscoeturner.org . This also included a map. When exiting the Interstate, large signs were posted to assist in getting there.

We arrived about an hour and a half after the doors opened and found the parking lots jammed. There were plenty of places to park, though it did mean a bit of a walk. Fortunately, the weather was cool but not cold and so not at all unpleasant. As I'd had my forms already filled out, registration was quick. The charge was $5 for 1-5 models and $10 for any over that. A fair way to do things, in my opinion. It was $5 just to enter the vendors room so it made little sense not to bring entries.

As with last year, there was one full gym for the vendors and one for the contest entries. The floor was covered with thin mats, which caused me to trip on the overlapping areas a few times. Tables were up on extensions, which kept little hands away from the models, but had to make things impossible for those in wheelchairs to see anything. Some separate tables were provided so entrants wouldn't have to put their carrying boxes on the display tables. There were 71 different subject areas. Some were well represented and others sparsely populated. I'm not a good judge of how many models are in a room, but it seemed to be down a bit from last year as things were not that jammed together.

The Vendors room was jam packed in all respects. One thing is that it was quite hot, as you can't put that many fat, middle-aged men in one room and not increase the temperature to high levels. I won't go into how this affected the rest rooms either! There were refreshments served on the premises and while a tad pricey, were reasonable enough, as I'm sure the school was running the concession. For one thing, I always got a very cold soda and that was greatly appreciated.

Probably the only area that I can see might need improvement is the raffle. It was well run and tickets were $1 each, which was reasonable enough. The improvement would be in the number of prizes offered. There were not that many for an event of this size and much of what was there was donated by the vendors, who generally provide things they don't think they will be able to sell. I would suggest that the club actually go to the various hobby shops in the area and get items when they go on sale. A club will always make money on a raffle and the better the raffle prizes, the more money will be made. I did not spend as much as I normally do on raffles because of the dearth of goodies and I'm sure others were similarly reluctant and held back.

I really like the way the awards situation was handled. All the standard awards were placed with the model and firmly atop the entry form so there would be no guess as to whose was whose. Only the Best of and Special Awards were announced, which turned out to be a good thing as the PA system conked out and those awards had to be yelled out. As usual, when the doors opened after judging, there was a mass swarm to pack up and leave. The down side of this is that often, late entries and late visitors had no opportunity to see all the models on display. Though I know it is a bit of extra effort, perhaps the judging could be done while people are allowed to visit. This can be accomplished by blocking off various rows for judging, then when the end of the session is near, shooing people away from the next section and blocking that off. The display area is really huge with only about half the gym being used so one could easily make more room between table rows to accomplish this. This is only a suggestion and I'm sure that there are a multitude of reasons why the host club won't want to do this.

We finally got back on the road home about 4:30 local time, which is about standard for most of these events.

This is one of, if not the best show in the Midwest. Coming early in the year, it is one that I look forward to and have always enjoyed. It is well run, has a friendly staff and offers what has to be the best vendor concentration around. I highly encourage those who have not visited to come to next year's event. If you are within 250 miles or so, it is an easily handled day trip and you won't regret it.