Bobe's Hobby House
5719 North "W" Street, Pensacola, FL 32505


IPMS Nationals Report 2003 - Oklahoma City

by Mike Bobe


Well, I have just returned from the 2003 IPMS National Contest in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. I thought I would give you a brief report on my impressions of the show. Granted, this is not a full review of the show, since I was only there for one day of the three and a half day event. But still, it's better than nothing! This year's show did not seem to be one of the larger nationals in recent memory, but there were still some outstanding models on display, and some wonderful stuff in the vendor room. The facilities were quite nice, with plenty of room, if perhaps a lack of restrooms for a venue this size!

Anyway, on with the show report! Let's start with the vendor room. To me the highlight of the entire vendor room was the announcement of the return of Aeromaster Paint! The new Aeromaster paint will be matched to the previous shades, but will now be produced by Vallejo, in the Vallejo Air formula. This is outstanding news, as the old Aeromaster colors are definitely missed. Also, these colors will be far more useful than the line of colors Vallejo Air has offered. We have already ordered our rack, and are expecting it in the near future! Other new lines we will be picking up include Heiser's HO scale Armored Vehicles, and the Cobra Company's products. There were also displays of upcoming items from the great folks over at Black Box. Meteor Productions unveiled their new ship line, with a beautiful gun deck section. They also had a pile of new decals, including the Presidential S-3 Viking.And if you haven't seen their Space Shuttle decals and exhausts, they are fantastic! Tamiya displayed the new P-47 Bubbletop in 1/48. It should be arriving later this month. Revell/Monogram was showing test shots of the Breguet Atlantic and the Leopard Bridgelayer, both in 1/72. As usual, The Small Shop always had a crowd for the demonstrations of the Hold n Fold Photo-etched Bending Tool. Eagle Editions was showing their latest books, and their new resin parts line. There were many more familiar faces, and good deals, but I think that covers most of the highlights.

Now for the contest! There was a pretty good turnout in almost all categories on Thursday. And I'm sure many more models came in on Friday as well. There is always the smell of fresh paint and glue at a big show like this. It is always hard to decide what to take pictures of when there are so many models, so I tried to shoot things that caught my eye. The two absolute highlights were a 1/48 Felixstowe Flying Boat from a Vacform kit, and the scratchbuilt LAV-25 in 1/16 by Talal Chouman. Talal's work is always amazing. What doesn't show up as well in the pictures is that this is a definite modelers AFV. Inside the vehicle were Tamiya and Italeri kit boxes, as well as a Fine Scale Modeler, and an IPMS Journal, all to scale! There were also the usual buildups of recent kits, including at least three of the Trumpeter 1/350 Aircraft Carrier Kits. There were also some fantastic small scale gems, like the 1/72 P-39 with all the exposed internals. Ships and Small Scale Armor were also well represented. Take a look at the picture gallery for my shots of the show.

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