It seems like the guys (and a few gals) who spend their time gluing bits of plastic together to make model cars should have a lot in common with the guys and gals who glue bits of plastic together to make model planes and tanks. But walk around the automotive tables at an IPMS show and you’ll almost certainly hear someone whispering something like “these IPMS guys just don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to cars”. Usually they say it a little more colorfully than that. And you hear it again at the end of the show when the whispering is a little louder and along the lines of “how did that ever win!”.
Showing posts with label IPMS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IPMS. Show all posts
Monday, April 9, 2018
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Madonna has Wrinkles!
The latest IPMS Journal - the National Convention issue - just arrived in my mailbox.
If you haven't seen a copy of the Journal lately, it is probably a lot nicer than you remember. A few years ago a new team took over producing the magazine and brought in a new printer; its now a slick full-color publication (you can see some sample articles here). The Nationals issue has pictures of every model that won a trophy at the show, and the photography is awfully good for an all volunteer effort. Above are a scan of the cover and just one of about 50 pages of show results.
This is awesome, except for one thing... all the models in the magazine appear to be perfect. Since I judged a few of these models and ogled many of the others, I know that while they are all very good models, only a very few had none of the tell-tale signs of being built by humans; almost every model there had something wrong visible if you put your eyeball about 3 inches away and looked long and hard enough.
Of course the reason they look perfect is pretty obvious: the tiny building and finishing errors that judges look for are pretty much invisible in a 2 inch x 2 inch photo.
While there isn't any conspiracy involved, this is a little like the fashion magazines that Photoshop pictures of celebrities and super-models to appear prison-camp thin - with glowing, blemish-free complexions - and so make young women think they have to be malnourished to be attractive. Modelers looking at just pictures in magazines may be telling themselves "I could never build that good", when in fact they already do.
Of course the reason they look perfect is pretty obvious: the tiny building and finishing errors that judges look for are pretty much invisible in a 2 inch x 2 inch photo.
While there isn't any conspiracy involved, this is a little like the fashion magazines that Photoshop pictures of celebrities and super-models to appear prison-camp thin - with glowing, blemish-free complexions - and so make young women think they have to be malnourished to be attractive. Modelers looking at just pictures in magazines may be telling themselves "I could never build that good", when in fact they already do.
So by all means look at the model magazines for inspiration and ideas, just don't give yourself an inferiority complex!
P.S. I was going to put an un-retouched photo of Madonna here but I chickened out; if you want to see the inspiration for this post try typing "retouched celebrities" into your favorite search engine.
Don
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Powered by Ford
Ford had long known that most car buyers want a little something extra under the hood. When they offered the first mass production flathead V8 engine in the 1932 Ford the factories couldn't keep up with the demand, even though the country was in the middle of the Great Depression. Ford not only raised the performance bar, they kicked off a horsepower war that is still going on today.
Despite being first to the V8 party, Ford was playing catch up going into the 60s. In the 50s the Detroit automakers realized that Americans wanted bigger and more powerful cars, and they all designed new V8s to power them. Most manufacturers had two different engines; a "small block" that in various displacements could power everything from compacts to full-size sedans, and a "big block" for trailer-towing and high performance applications.
Developing a new engine was a big, expensive job that would influence the maker's cars for years to come; getting it right was critical to the long term success of the brand. However during this critical time, product decisions at Ford were being made by the "Whiz Kids" - a group of fresh from college statisticians and accountants who had made a name managing the Army Air Force during WWII, and had been hired by Henry Ford II to help him get control of the massive business he had inherited from his grandfather. Unfortunately the Whiz Kids knew nothing about the auto business; they focused on building practical, efficient cars that were also boring and that no one wanted to buy (think "Edsel"). Compared to the competition's new engines, Ford's V8s were physically smaller and had narrower cylinder heads with smaller valves and ports that limited power potential.
But as the saying goes, "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". Ford engineers pulled out every hot-rod trick in the book to squeeze every bit of horsepower possible from the basic engine designs they had to work with. Solid lifter camshafts, big valve heads, tri-power and dual-quad carburetion, tunnel-port intakes, all made appearances in Ford showrooms. And the ultra-compact small block had an unexpected silver-lining: it could be shoehorned under the hood of tiny English roadsters, turning otherwise agrarian little cars like the AC Ace and Sunbeam Alpine into Corvette-killers.
Above is a photo I took at a car show sometime back in the 80s showing the ultimate bit of Ford engine development, the 427 SOHC. Originally developed to take on Chrysler's Hemi in NASCAR, the monstrous overhead-cam heads were bolted to Fords rugged 7 liter big block, yielding 700+ horsepower in race trim. But Ford's success was short lived. The last thing Bill France wanted in NASCAR were exotic engines pushing up the cost of competitive racing; hearing carefully leaked rumors of Chrysler developing a DOHC Hemi to counter Ford, he would ban the SOHC motor before it ever raced. Ford sold a few to drag racers and the few crazies who had to have the fastest Galaxie on their block no matter the price, and the ultimate Ford big block quietly faded into history.
Despite being first to the V8 party, Ford was playing catch up going into the 60s. In the 50s the Detroit automakers realized that Americans wanted bigger and more powerful cars, and they all designed new V8s to power them. Most manufacturers had two different engines; a "small block" that in various displacements could power everything from compacts to full-size sedans, and a "big block" for trailer-towing and high performance applications.
Developing a new engine was a big, expensive job that would influence the maker's cars for years to come; getting it right was critical to the long term success of the brand. However during this critical time, product decisions at Ford were being made by the "Whiz Kids" - a group of fresh from college statisticians and accountants who had made a name managing the Army Air Force during WWII, and had been hired by Henry Ford II to help him get control of the massive business he had inherited from his grandfather. Unfortunately the Whiz Kids knew nothing about the auto business; they focused on building practical, efficient cars that were also boring and that no one wanted to buy (think "Edsel"). Compared to the competition's new engines, Ford's V8s were physically smaller and had narrower cylinder heads with smaller valves and ports that limited power potential.
But as the saying goes, "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". Ford engineers pulled out every hot-rod trick in the book to squeeze every bit of horsepower possible from the basic engine designs they had to work with. Solid lifter camshafts, big valve heads, tri-power and dual-quad carburetion, tunnel-port intakes, all made appearances in Ford showrooms. And the ultra-compact small block had an unexpected silver-lining: it could be shoehorned under the hood of tiny English roadsters, turning otherwise agrarian little cars like the AC Ace and Sunbeam Alpine into Corvette-killers.
Above is a photo I took at a car show sometime back in the 80s showing the ultimate bit of Ford engine development, the 427 SOHC. Originally developed to take on Chrysler's Hemi in NASCAR, the monstrous overhead-cam heads were bolted to Fords rugged 7 liter big block, yielding 700+ horsepower in race trim. But Ford's success was short lived. The last thing Bill France wanted in NASCAR were exotic engines pushing up the cost of competitive racing; hearing carefully leaked rumors of Chrysler developing a DOHC Hemi to counter Ford, he would ban the SOHC motor before it ever raced. Ford sold a few to drag racers and the few crazies who had to have the fastest Galaxie on their block no matter the price, and the ultimate Ford big block quietly faded into history.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
IPMS at the Mouse House
I just got back from the IPMS Nationals, held at one of the many convention centers at Disney World in Orlando. The show website is here http://www.ipms2012.org/ and once the guys in the Pelikan chapter recover and catch up with their real lives, the official results should be posted there.
Disney World is a decidedly strange place. Disney has done such a good job of convincing people it is the place to take the family that on any given day a quarter of a million people - roughly the entire population of the City of Pittsburgh - file through the gates of the various Florida amusement parks. The dirty little secret is that while the parks are beautifully maintained and the rides and shows are top notch, you spend most of your time waiting in lines just to get to those rides and shows. Hard core Disney visitors develop strategies to minimize their time waiting, turning a day in the park into a race against the clock to ride and see as many attractions as possible.
Of course all those people need places to sleep, so most of the hotels are built on a scale that make you think the architect misplaced a decimal point when he drew the plans. The Contemporary Hotel where the Nationals were held has a lobby big enough to hold an average Holiday Inn, and sleeps about as many people as you'll find at a high-school football game. That means that modelers only filled up about half the place. Disney, especially in the summer months, tends to naturally select visitors who are young, athletic and look like they have wandered off the set of a 90210 episode. In short, they look nothing like most IPMS members - which no doubt made for some interesting elevator rides.
Aside from the clash of cultures, Disney turns out to be a great place to hold a Nats. The model room was huge and well lit, the vendor rooms were equally huge (no crowded aisles) and well stocked, and (unofficially) 2700 models were on the tables. No doubt due to the location, a number of truly international modelers traveled to the event, including a contingent from Venezuela who took home a lot of trophies. And after a hard day of looking at and shopping for models, it was really nice to relax poolside with friends and a cold drink.
This motorcycle is the model that won it all, taking home the George Lee Best of Show award. The builder was Ricardo Gonzalez from Venezuela, and he looked to be in heaven as he walked up to collect the award.
I helped judge the automotive categories, and while I didn't judge this model I got to take a good look at it as part of the voting for the Best Auto award. I don't know how the Best of Show choice was made, but among the dozen automotive judges this model was a nearly unanimous choice for Best Auto.
There has been some discussion on the internet about this being such a "simple" model and whether it was deserving of Best in Show; but I can say it was far from a simple build. The modeler added lots of detail parts (front forks, PE chain, more I can't remember) and then built it flawlessly. The paint was clean and shiny, the decals were perfect, and the more you looked the more you saw. Some day I'm going to try to explain how IPMS judging works here, but this model literally did everything right.
For 2013 the Nationals are in Loveland Colorado - north of Denver - and for 2014 they will return to Virginia Beach for the 50th Anniversary of IPMS - a show you won't want to miss and an easy drive from western PA. I better get building...
Disney World is a decidedly strange place. Disney has done such a good job of convincing people it is the place to take the family that on any given day a quarter of a million people - roughly the entire population of the City of Pittsburgh - file through the gates of the various Florida amusement parks. The dirty little secret is that while the parks are beautifully maintained and the rides and shows are top notch, you spend most of your time waiting in lines just to get to those rides and shows. Hard core Disney visitors develop strategies to minimize their time waiting, turning a day in the park into a race against the clock to ride and see as many attractions as possible.
Of course all those people need places to sleep, so most of the hotels are built on a scale that make you think the architect misplaced a decimal point when he drew the plans. The Contemporary Hotel where the Nationals were held has a lobby big enough to hold an average Holiday Inn, and sleeps about as many people as you'll find at a high-school football game. That means that modelers only filled up about half the place. Disney, especially in the summer months, tends to naturally select visitors who are young, athletic and look like they have wandered off the set of a 90210 episode. In short, they look nothing like most IPMS members - which no doubt made for some interesting elevator rides.
Aside from the clash of cultures, Disney turns out to be a great place to hold a Nats. The model room was huge and well lit, the vendor rooms were equally huge (no crowded aisles) and well stocked, and (unofficially) 2700 models were on the tables. No doubt due to the location, a number of truly international modelers traveled to the event, including a contingent from Venezuela who took home a lot of trophies. And after a hard day of looking at and shopping for models, it was really nice to relax poolside with friends and a cold drink.
This motorcycle is the model that won it all, taking home the George Lee Best of Show award. The builder was Ricardo Gonzalez from Venezuela, and he looked to be in heaven as he walked up to collect the award.
I helped judge the automotive categories, and while I didn't judge this model I got to take a good look at it as part of the voting for the Best Auto award. I don't know how the Best of Show choice was made, but among the dozen automotive judges this model was a nearly unanimous choice for Best Auto.
There has been some discussion on the internet about this being such a "simple" model and whether it was deserving of Best in Show; but I can say it was far from a simple build. The modeler added lots of detail parts (front forks, PE chain, more I can't remember) and then built it flawlessly. The paint was clean and shiny, the decals were perfect, and the more you looked the more you saw. Some day I'm going to try to explain how IPMS judging works here, but this model literally did everything right.
For 2013 the Nationals are in Loveland Colorado - north of Denver - and for 2014 they will return to Virginia Beach for the 50th Anniversary of IPMS - a show you won't want to miss and an easy drive from western PA. I better get building...
Friday, July 6, 2012
Open Judging - Our 800 Pound Gorilla
If you've entered a model at one of the Three Rivers IPMS shows in the last 10 or so years you noticed that things were a little different as soon as you put your models down on the tables. Instead of there being lots of small areas marked off for very specific scales and subjects (such as "1/48 Small Prop - Single Engine Aircraft), there are whole tables marked for broad categories like "1/48 and larger Aircraft". And when it came to awards time, things probably seemed even more different as modelers were handed gold, silver and bronze medallions instead of the usual 1st, 2nd and 3rd place plaques.
Three Rivers is one a few clubs using a style of judging generally known as "Open Judging" or "Chicago Rules". The big difference is that rather than pick the 3 best models from a small group of models, "Open Judging" scores every model into 4 tiers: gold, silver, bronze and no-award. All of the models scoring a "gold" receive a gold medallion, all of the models scored "silver" receive a silver medallion, and so on. If there are four really good 1/48 P51s entered; they can all receive a gold medal. In a regular 1st-2nd-3rd sort of contest, the judges would have to sort out which of the four was the best, second best, third best and which went home empty handed. It helps eliminate the element of luck: under Open Judging a model's chance of earning an award no longer depends on what other models happened to show up that day.
Open Judging is used at a lot of big (non-IPMS) figure and model contests, including MFCA (figures),
AMPS (armor), and Wonderfest (sci-fi).
So why doesn't everyone use Open Judging?
Some of the reasons are practical. Since you don't know exactly how many models are going to win awards the club needs to buy a lot of extras. And since the judges look closely at every model, judging takes a little longer than at a 1-2-3 event. This is all true, but they are not impossible problems - as demonstrated by the number of big long-running shows using this system. It took Three Rivers a few years to polish out the rough spots, but its now a point of pride in the club that we've made it work when lots of experts said it couldn't be done.
But the big reason is that some modelers think the lack of a single "winner" in every category means an Open Judged event isn't really a contest. Since more models receive an award under Open Judging some see the awards being cheapened. Open Judging gets lumped in with Outcome Based Education (whatever that is) and T-Ball leagues that don't keep score as another reason the country is going to hell in a hand basket.
Here is the straight dope on the number of medals awarded at our show: about 10% of all models earn a gold, about 20% earn a silver and 35% earn a bronze. So for our typical 1 day show that draws about 400 models, there will be about 40 gold medals, 80 silver and 140 bronze medals (260 total medals). A typical 1-2-3 show with 400 models would have at least 40 categories - that means 40 first places, 40 second places and 40 third places. To over simplify, there are about as many gold medals given at our show as first places at a 1-2-3 show, and about as many silver medals as seconds and thirds combined. An unscientific review of the results over the the past few years shows the modelers taking gold and silver medals are more or less the same folks taking the top awards at the 1-2-3 shows (which tells us the system is working to recognize top quality work).
That doesn't mean that bronze medals are some sort of pity award. To earn a bronze medal a model must demonstrate good basic construction and finishing; it can't have glaring or systemic errors. At a 1-2-3 show these models would have at least been in the first cut and may well have placed; I've seen models place at the IPMS Nationals that would have earned a bronze at our show.
I have to think a lot of the criticism of Open Judging is coming from people who have never tried it. Our experience is that the judging teams love it - even though they're working twice as hard - because they no longer have heated discussions as to which model is better than another. We haven't gotten much feedback from the entrants, but we see folks coming back year after year, and no one is leaving their awards behind.
To be honest, it might be a little boring if every show used Open Judging: after you took a model to one show you'd be pretty sure what medal it would earn at all the other shows. Eliminating luck from the results also eliminates some of the excitement. But since there is zero chance all of IPMS is going to switch, I think the few shows that do use Open Judging provide a nice change of pace. If you never tried it before, please give us a chance to win you over!
And if you have been to our show, please let us know what you think. Just click on the comment link below.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)