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.
