Our April meeting had 10 members in attendence. I was out of town for the meeting so the newsletter is coming from Randy's notes. 

Please be sure and visit our website at www.oocities.org/swamp001. We now have had over 11,700 hits.

DUES ARE NOW DUE!  If you have not paid your $12 please bring it to the meeting and give it to Randy. Our Account has almost $1500.00 in it as of the April meeting. 

The executive committee voted to sponsor a trophy package at the IPMS Nationals this year. The host chapter sponsored packages at our joint contest and this is also the first time in many years where the cost has been affordable, at $60. A check has been sent and hopefully we can soon find out what category we got. Our club name will be engraved on the trophies.

Phil Campbell did his demo on figure painting and as always it was well received. Phil showed techniques for using both oils and acrylics. This will become a segment on the website in the near future. 

Paul Lovell , Alex Smith, Phil Campbell, Mike Petryszak and I went to the SCMA contest in Columbia on May 4th. This was a good show. It was well attended, with lots of quality models on display and now the non car categories are being more well represented with a larger number of entries in these categories than ever before. If you have never been to this show it is worth your time to go as it gets better each year and the guys in SCMA do a real good job. Several of us were lucky enough to come home with some trophies. Phil picked up a 2nd for his Honest John, Alex got two 1sts for his F-16 and British Mustang I got a 1st for my Hawker Tempest Mk.II and a 2nd for my He-280 ! and Do-335. Paul also won some trophies and I will list them next month when I get the information from him as well as the Winston-Salem contest where he, Tim and Tony also scored some wood! 

I attended the Fayetteville contest along with Jimmy Steele. This was a small show with only 140-150 models entered. The Gold, Silver, Bronze award format was used and the results left a lot of people scratching their heads. Jimmy Steele got two silver medals for his Shermans and I got a bronze for my Do-335. The biggest complaint that I have is that there were only 13 categories and I really feel they need to expand these. Other wise the show was good, great vendors, great raffle and great venue. Speaking of vendors it was good to see Tina of Avia Imports again. We are glad that she has made a full recovery from her illness and look forward to seeing more of her on the show circuit.

The 60th reunion of the Doolittle Raiders was in town the 16th thru the 20th of April. This went exceptionally well. Members were able to participate in many ways. I was able to drive a car in the parade with veterans from the USS Hornet as passengers and also to serve as guide to people at Owens field giving them informational tours of the different aircraft. John Sherrer had a presentation on the WWII Homefront in Columbia that was very well done from what I have heard. The most stirring part of this was the formation fly over of 10 B-25 bombers. What a sight and sound it was!

There was lots of great new stuff & built ups to see, here is a rundown of what people brought:

Built-ups and in-progresses:
1. 1/48 IL-2 from Alex Smith
2. 1/35 M60A1 from Chris lamey
3. 1/72 Blohm und Voss Bv-2002  scratchbuilt/kitbash from Paul Lovell
4. 1/48 Blackburn Skua from Hub Plott

Here’s a list of the upcoming contests:

Jul 31- Aug 3, IPMS/USA Nationals, Virginia Beach, VA*

Those with an * are the ones members of our club are planning to attend.

Next meeting:
May 23rd at 7:00PM at Hobbytown USA on Harbison Blvd. Randy and Steve will be in charge as I will not be in town Again Phil Campbel will be doing a demo on how to paint figures if his hand has healed sufficiently. So come on out after all it is your club. 

Till next time

Hub