2025 IPMS/USA National Convention

The 2025 IPMS/USA National Convention was held at the Hampton Roads Convention Center in Hampton, Virginia, during the first week in August. Krista did not accompany me on the trip this year, so I made it a total air/space nerd trip. On the way to the convention, I stopped at the National Museum of the United States Air Force and the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum. It had been several years since I had visited either facility and was impressed with the new hanger at the USAF museum. No longer do you have to board a special bus to go see the experimental aircraft. Everything is now in one place and what a place it is! The Udvar-Hazy center was pretty much as I remembered it from my last visit. It's a real treat to walk around all those historical aircraft/spacecraft. Definitely worth the trip in my case.

The convention center was nicely laid out: all of the vendors were in one room and all of the contest entries and Tiger Meet displays were in another room. The aisles in both rooms were wide enough so there was plenty of space to move around. My back wished that the contest tables had been raised up a bit higher, though. And the temperature in the convention center was low enough to need a jacket inside. My presumption was that the temperature was kept low to keep the models from melting, even though the outside temperature was quite reasonable for August. The Space Modelers met Wednesday evening for our annual get-together dinner at Surf Rider, a wonderful seafood restaurant. The food, while a bit pricey, was outstanding as was the company. Rob Schorry hosted the space modelers seminar on Thursday and described how he scratchbuilt his model of the proposed Apophis asteroid probe. John Duncan described his research efforts on the Saturn rockets, particularly the Saturn I. Fascinating stuff. Thursday evening was the Tunnels 2 Towers bbq dinner at the Virginia Air and Space Museum. It was for a good cause and we had the entire museum to ourselves for the evening. On Saturday morning, we discovered that David Carlton's cutaway Gemini-Titan won the Best Space and Sci-Fi award. He also won the special Innovation award for his cutaway model of the Monitor (not pictured). Saturday evening's awards show was run concurrently with the banquet: the winners were displayed on projection screens while we ate. The Junior and Teen entries, along with the special award winners were announced separately after the banquet. It was a very efficient way to run the ceremony as it as over before 9:00pm, so we gathered up our models, said our goodbyes and promised to meet next year in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

I was hoping to complete my air/space nerd trip by visiting the Cosmosphere in Kansas on my way home, only to discover that it's closed on Tuesdays. I guess I'll have to schedule my visit better for next time. And given the amount of road construction I encountered along the approximately 4000 mile trip, I now believe the three most wonderful words in the English language are: "End Road Work."

Like last year, a display only section was set up to allow modelers to show off models that weren't entered in the competition. The Space Modelers SIG had a couple of tables that were well populated. I brought a few models, including a couple of paper ones. The upper stage of my Vostok had fallen off during the trip, but I quickly glued it back on... crookedly. Oh well... it was just a display. Most of the models were provided by Gordo Fesenger, while Scott Bregi, Dom Durocher, Mike Idacavage, Rob Schorry, Michael Shelley and John Huggins added the rest.

You can access a photo through its thumbnail on each gallery page or you can page through the photos, since they're all chained together.