Starting 2016

Meeting at the new location: Members discuss their current projects and their thoughts on kits. We currently meet in one of the classrooms at the Renaissance Academy charter school in Lehi, Utah.

It's the new year, and so there's no excuse: The Blog must go on! 

Our little group now has about a dozen members, with anywhere from six to a dozen showing up on meeting night, which is now the third Wednesday of the month starting at 7 pm. Thanks to the kindness of leadership at the Renaissance Academy and the Space Education Center under construction there, we have a classroom we can meet in that has good lighting and lots of room for our group to display their kits and projects and engage in friendly discussion. In return, we are planning to start a Jr Modelbuilder club for the kids in the school, so we can teach some modeling skills and maybe prime the pump for future membership! 

Our schedule for the 2016 year:

January:     Demo night - Safety

February:   Theme night - Korean War

March:       Club Contest: Airfix (and Heller) Challenge

April:         Theme night - Civilian

May:          Demo night - Airbrushing

June:          Swap Meet

July:          Demo night - Adhesives

August:      Theme night - Moving the Troops

September: Club Build - Sherman Mania

October:     Demo night - Tools

November: Theme night - What if?

December: Christmas Party

December Catch-up

T-34/85 modeled by Paul Bishop. Love the weathering.

I know- I've done it again! Sorry about having to catch us up on events from the second half of the year. After working on the computer all day, sometimes it's hard to want to spend more time on the computer. Now, however, I'll have to do a better job of posting on the events of our Southern Front club, as it looks like we're about to get our official membership as a chapter in the IPMS. I'll of course post an item when that happens. 

Our annual Christmas club meeting is about to take place, and I thought I'd better post a bunch more photos. Here's a representative showing of our club meeting models since June, and I'll try to post more of them before the new year. I also apologize if I've gotten anyone's names wrong, just post a comment and let me get it corrected!

Cold War German tank destroyer in progress, I think also by Ron.

Cold War submarines from Bill's collection.

Clay built these great looking 1/48 Corsairs.

Ryan enjoys building Sci-Fi models. Spindrift from Land of the Giants and the Flying Sub from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

On "Speculation" theme night, Ron brought in this unusual armor model.

At the contest in Ogden, Bill's 1/144 X-15's won First Place in Real Spacecraft.

Daniel's building the BIG MODEL of New Jersey (I think it was that one...), with lots of photoetch.

Daniel gave us a demonstration of photoetch techniques. Here's a close up of the photoetch on a battleship's turret. I'll be posting more on his demo.

Playing Catch-Up

Veterans of the Southern Front gather for a meeting. Oh, and there are some real veterans there, too.

Time for me to repent of my blogging sins and repent of my procrastinating ways. Which means I have some catching up to do since the last post (sorry!). I can do that best with pictures. In the photo above, our group is seen meeting in the Discovery teaching room at the Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center, in Pleasant Grove, Utah. If the room is not scheduled for spaceflight simulation briefings, then we can sometimes move from our normal location to the more interesting surroundings of the Space Center. Another nice feature of this room is that it's closer to the main doors, and closer to the two display cabinets in which some models of our members are displayed. We provide interesting model exhibits for the students and school visitors in two very different cabinets. The first one, near the entrance to the Space Center (inside the school) is tall, providing excellent locations for Bill Schuler's rocket models such as a huge 1/72 scale Chinese Long March rocket. The second one, by the school office, is changed out regularly to provide variety. Currently (May 2012) we have some helicopters and a very large scale Jet fighter. The cabinet is quite wide, but flat, so that we have a height limitation for it.

October meeting: 1/48 planes. Perhaps by Clay?

In most of our meetings, we might have a theme, but any item you bring is for show and tell. This can easily get sidetracked into "sea stories" and anecdotes not only by the presenter but also members who (unfortunately) can get carried away with the subject... sometimes we have forcefully remind ourselves to get back on target...

Starship Defiant. I believe this was Jared's. I think.

For 2012, we have settled upon a list of themes for each month. The themes were meant to be somewhat vague, or open, in that if you can reason your way into the theme, then go ahead and bring your model. Themes we had for the first 5 months of 2012: 

January= Fame. Models of items used by a particular individual.

February= Yearly Contest. For 2012, the theme of the contest is "Paint it Black." 

March= Foreign Wars. In other words, wars that didn't include the USA as a belligerent. 

April= Air Superiority. Obvious in military terms, for civilian, domination of a market...

May= Lend Lease. Items sold off or given to other countries.

Roger's ships. Roger is devoted to 1/700 ship models. Mainly.

The theme for June 2012 is "Naval". Any naval subject. Military or civilian. Simply, naval related, freshwater or saltwater. In fictional terms, models of ships that were part of a "space fleet" in their story background. Thus a "UFO" would not count, but a "Starfleet" ship would.

1/144 Stealth Helicopter by Ryan. Under development. Tiny!

The main idea for our monthly subjects was to find themes that encompassed a wide variety of model types, including civilian (trucks, cars, spacecraft, planes, etc) where possible. Hopefully we then don't leave any members out.

Dave F's collection of "Ogre" sci-fi wargame miniatures. In back, some of Bill's spacecraft.

Of course, anything someone brings is welcome as long as it's a model. Sometimes I bring in my wargame models. In the case above, Dave Flitton brought a large collection of "Ogre" sci-fi miniatures he's collected over the years. Cool to see them.

Over the next month, I'll try to include more pictures from our meetings in early 2012, including the February Contest. I'll wrap-up the catching-up after the June meeting.

Ogden show , October 1st

Models on display at the Ogden model show.

On Saturday October 1st, The Ogden modelers put on a model show for the state groups (out of state welcome also). Quite a few of our Southern Front members made a showing there as well. I have to admit that the number of models entered was very sparse, but the timing of the show wasn't too good as it was up against LDS General Conference.

In the vendors area, Daniel laid out a display of his finely detailed work with large scale planes and his resin detail kits.

Several of our club banded together to get a table where they could sell some of their surplus kits. Ryan and Clay told me they did fairly well in the sales arena.

The models in the Submarines category easily outnumbered ALL other ship models entered. It makes me chuckle for two reasons. First, Bill Schuler and I years ago came up with the special award "Trident Award" for best submarine, to help promote submarine modeling. It finally grew to be a busy category on its own for many years now, and the Trident Award has been retired. The second reason I chuckle is because Bill Schuler can almost win the category by sheer numbers. Most of the models in the picture are his.

Bill also won first place in Collections with his submarine collection (yes, even MORE subs). To be honest, there would have been another competitor but disaster struck poor Clay. Clay's collection of biplanes fell onto the asphalt while unloading the car, and his models were damaged. Clay's pretty tough though, and he persevered through the show.

Bill had a chuckle as well during the show. Kind of as a joke, he entered this model of a Guppy 2 Fleet Class sub. This submarine was filmed in the Sci-Fi B movie "It Came From Beneath the Sea." It's modeled after an actual sub, but did star in Sci-fi, so it qualified in the sci-fi category. And won third place!

Sci-Fi was pretty popular with our members. Dave R entered this amazing kit-bashed/scratchbuild spaceship. It wasn't on a stand, so it's tilted for this view.

Ryan didn't just have a table, he also entered several kits. Here's one of my favorites, the ship from "Land of the Giants" TV show.

For this post's last picture, there was one I HAD to include. Pete Bave from SLC had a lot of entries at the show. Here's his War of the Worlds MArtian War machine. It's based on the 50's George Pal film. Love the little burned up ash heap where the luckless peace-nic "used to be." This diorama also featured sound from the show, and lights in the Martian machine.

August pictures

1/200 Yamato. A lot of details for eye candy.

Our group had about 14 people show up this month, much more than I thought there would be due to my preconceived notions of hot weather and vacations. After a quick discussion most members agreed that we could at this point begin forming our own IPMS chapter. I look forward to getting all the information we need to prepare for that. Until then, enjoy some pictures of models both finished and in progress. The Theme for August was "Cold Wars" but as usual we had a smorgasbord of subjects. The themes are very vague, so as long as you can tie your model somehow to the subject, you win bonus fictional points. Yippie! Next month's theme is "Civilian" which means anything created for, or was used by, Civilians. Thanks to Dave Flitton for taking the photos.

Yamato with its R/C guts exposed. Once detail was added to the model, it stopped making pond excursions. Thanks for bringing this giant ship in, Jared!

In Progress.

In progress.

1/72.

In progress.

Beautifully modeled narrow-gauge baggage car.

Clay's?

Clay's for sure.

Daniel continues his incredible work on large-scale aircraft.

August meeting coming up

US Rocket collection at Kennedy Space Center. Unknown scale, approximately 1/144.

Our August meeting will be Aug. 16th, the third Tuesday, as normal. Our theme for August is "Cold Wars" which includes subjects dealing with winter warfare, the official "Cold War", or dealing with cold environments. Until then, I'm posting a few pictures of some models. Obviously, the top picture of the rockets was not built by one of our members. Actually, I think our members would have made better models.

Some of Roger's 1/700 US destroyers. Something unusual about that one in the foreground.

June's theme was "Naval" which covers a great deal of subjects. So I thought I'd show some pictures of Roger's collection and also Dave F.'s collection.

Dave F. also collects ships in 1/700.

Click on the picture to see a larger image. See you guys in August!

June Meeting update

OK, it's time to turn this blog loose to do its work helping our members prepare for meetings and displaying pictures. I was unable to attend most of last month's meeting due to work, but someone had mentioned we were doing Naval as the theme last month. Checking our printed schedule, however, I see that last month was supposed to be "Lend Lease" and June is "Naval"!

I better get the word out!