East Midlands Model Show 2006

23.04.06

Once again this year the event was held at the The Leisure Centre, Hinckley, Leicestershire. We all rolled in early on the Sunday morning, having in our instance run the gauntlet of rain and Tesco's lorries on the route up! Access is pretty good at the event, if you know where you are going and the organisers have the facility of a near-by car park for the traders and clubs that is very useful. The venue has its own public car park on the other side of the building and thankfully there is no parking fee in it on a Sunday, so you don't have to fork out yet more money just to park for the show.



Set up started at 7.30am, with the venue opened to the public a little earlier than planned at around 9.45am, by which time we had set up the ADH stand.



As you can see by the clock, this shot was taken at 9.25am, and in just over 20 minutes the event was opened to the public - busy, busy!

After initial set-up we went for a wonder around to take in both the display halls and the competition room. Overall the standard of modelling was very high, with a very wide and varied selection of subjects and scales on display. Here are some of a few that caught our eye.

A very nice 1:32 Trumpeter F4F-4 Wildcat on the Wallingford stand I think?
A 1:32 MiG-23M built from the old ID vac-form kit (well mainly scratchbuilt actually!), seen on the IPMS Avon stand
An excellent Korean War-era 1:48 B-29 Superfortress, built from the Monogram kit of course
On the Black Cross Society stand was this cannon-armed 1:48 Me 262
Catching the eye mainly because of how new it was, was this this 1:48 Focke-Achgelis
FA-223, which we presume was built from the Special Hobby kit?
On the Quarter-Scale Group stand was this Hercules C Mk 1, converted from an Italeri
C-130 kit in 1:48

Su-27 Flanker supremo Ken Duffy had his much-modified 1:32 Trumpeter kit on display





A very striking 1:48 CF-18 Hornet in commemorative RCAF colours - oooh, lovely!

At first sight this 1:72 SB-17 looks like the usual USCG version, but on closer inspection you can see it is in Portuguese markings, very nice!

Seen on the USAF SIG stand was this beast, a development as you can tell of the SR-71.

THE COMPETITION
This was held upstairs in a separate room as usual, adjacent to the cafeteria, so well frequented! The number of entrants was not massive, but the overall quality was very good. Here are some of those models entered.


1:32 Bf 109G in Regia Aeronatica colours, probably built from the Hasegawa kit

An extremely shiny 1:48 Hawker Hunter

The Convair Pogo, built, we presume, from the KP 1:48 kit

While this 1:32 F4U Corsair was built presumably from the Trumpeter kit

A 1:48 Fokker D.VII built we understand by George Coote from Milton Keynes from the new Eduard kit

A highly effective bit of weathering was seen on this 1:48 Henschel Hs 129

THANKS
A good time was had by one and all and I am sure you will all join us in passing on heart-felt thanks to everyone who organised and ran the event. A special vote of thanks to Simon Mepstead and Gordon Upton for their hard work and our congratulations to everyone who took part and attained prizes within the competition.

We are already looking forward to next year's event!

For more details from the show, with contacts and live links visit the 2006 page on the Modelspot site.

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