Photos from the 2014 IPMS/USA National Convention

I was going to give the 2014 IPMS/USA National Convention a miss this year, but I just couldn't stay away. The lovely Krista trusted me enough to send me out on my own, as she was unable to accompany me this time. As always, it was great to meet the old gang and meet some of the new gang members. We had a great Space Modelers dinner Wednesday night at a local joint a couple of blocks from the Virginia Air and Space Museum. On Thursday, some of the guys headed up to Wallops Island, but I opted to tour much older places: Jamestown and Yorktown. Thursday evening was the Wounded Warriors Project dinner at the Virginia Air and Space Museum so we had the run of the museum after hours. Friday was seminar day: Mike Mackowski reviewed the history of Real Space Modeling at the IPMS/USA National Convention (Mike's account of the convention has a PDF of his presentation, along with the videos he showed), followed by the traditional giving out of the door prizes. He then gave a talk about how he built his Curiosity rover which ended up winning Best Space & Science Fiction Vehicle. The rest of the convention involved wandering about the vendor and contest room and talking to the guys. Next year's convention will be in Columbus, OH, and 2016 will be in Columbia, SC. Start making plans!

Modelers at the Virginia Air and Space Museum

Mike Mackskowki talks...

...as the Space Modelers listen while eyeing the table full of door prizes.

Plenty of door prizes for everyone!

The contest room

Since I shot 957 photos in the contest room (a personal best... after all digital is free!), I decided to limit the number of thumbnail images per gallery page to 100, so there are a lot of pages. The photos are pretty much in the order in which I shot them. I intended to photograph every model in the room, but that proved to be much more of a task than I anticipated. I apologize for the quality of some of the photos: I wasn't as careful with focusing as I should have been. I'll try to be better next time. Anyway, you can access each photo through its thumbnail on each gallery page or you can page through the photos, since they're all linked together.