Two Can’t Miss Scale Modeling Events In Sacramento And Salt Lake City

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I know, I know. We are in the midst of show season, man. It's hot and heavy now.

We are. And I think it's apparently National Technical Difficulty Day.

Well, we're we're getting bad storms, so I could uh I'd blame it on that if it was on this end.

I don't think they're here yet, but anyway, it's the model show spotlight for May. May show's coming up here. We got a couple we're gonna feature.

Yep. Two of them that we really need to get out to. You we gotta figure a way to get get out west, man.

I know, man. It's just money and time, money and time.

Yep.

Just like everything else in the world.

Gotta hit that big lottery.

Well, it's interesting because both those are kind of hosted by some longtime friends of ours in the in the pod community. And the first one is SilverCon, and that is Silver Wings out in Sacramento, California, if I'm not mistaken.

Yep.

Meet SilverCon Host Drew Savage

Well, Mr. Drew came on and gave us all ins and out about SilverCon. So let's see what uh he had to say. Dave, it always is a pleasure when we get to do one of these model show spotlights, and it's someone we've known for a long, long time. Coming to us again from the sunny state of California is longtime listener, Drew Savage. Drew, how are you doing tonight?

Hey, I'm doing great, Mike and Dave. Thanks for this opportunity, and I'm looking forward to talking about SilverCon and some of the unique things that we're trying this year.

SilverCon Date Venue Theme

Well, that sounds good. Well, let's just hit the ground run, and won't you tell us uh when the show is, where the show is, and all that good stuff.

Yeah, you bet. So the show is Saturday, May 16th, and that's here in Sacramento. It's at the Town and Country Lutheran Church, which is at 4049 Marconi Avenue in Sacramento. The doors open at nine. Judging begins about noon, and then we'll try to get the awards done in the 330-ish range to four o'clock so that we can get everybody out of there and get them home. And the theme this year, we've moved away, at least for this year, from a very specific theme, you know, like 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War or something like that, to the theme this year is heavy metal, the best use of natural metal finish. Oh nice. And and that was intentional. You know, we we really are working hard to bring in Gundam, mecca, warhammer, gaming, genres that typically don't participate in in the IPMS type model contests.

Well, how long have you all been doing this show?

IPMS Silverwings started in the early 70s, and we've had a show every year, except I think one year during COVID, maybe two years during COVID. Right. Um, and we uh I wasn't around for this, but we actually hosted a Nationals back in the 80s. I remember it. And I've been warned, you know, I've only been president of the club for a couple of years, but folks who are around in the 80s remind me don't you volunteer us for that again?

Well, uh you can tell your club it is a much different experience than it was then. It is much less reliant on the local club to do the backbreaking work of show prep. So much of it has been automated, so much of it like all when you all did it, I'm sure all the money was done at the local club level, whereas now it's all done at the national level, which takes that burden off y'all. So consider bidding again. I'd like to go to Sacramento.

Well, we'll see. I I I think, you know, in talking to other IPMS members at nationals, you know, the the the reason why we hold it in the places we do is we can actually get space for the amount of people and and models that are going to be there. Yeah. Even in Sacramento, you know, that would be hard press. I'm not sure. You know, we could end up in Lodi or something.

Well, well, tell us about this local show that you're doing. And so let's just call it in preparation for a future national.

Oh, way to sell it. Wow. There you go.

SilverCon Registration And Cash Rules

What's what's the uh registration process? You're are you online, partially online? What do you got going on there?

We do have an online registration process that is open right now. That'll be through May 13th, is when we'll close that. And you can actually get there through our website, which you know you can either google IPMS Silver Wings, and that obviously we'll take it to the website. But the actual website is www.sacramento-model-club.org. And they're the online, it's their first year for online. So there are some things that you know that that will be improved, I'll say it that way, going forward. But uh our team did a great job, I think, putting together a great first year system. We don't accept online payments. So once you've registered, printed your forms out, bring those to the contest on May 16th, and then you'll pay your registration fee, which again will be cash only. You can register on the day of the contest. If you don't have a computer, if you don't feel comfortable with computers and just want to show up and fill out a form by hand, you can still do that.

Good.

We'll we'll have two separate lines so that way the folks who have pre-registered can get their their models on the table sooner and go peruse the vendors and get into the raffles.

Well, you mentioned vendors. So what's your vendor setup? How many tables? Are you looking to fill a few last minute tables? What's the what's the deal?

So we have 20 over 20 vendors currently, which is 40 plus tables, and that's all on the inside. It's a church gymnasium, so the entire vendor cadre will be inside. And we got to the point where people were saying, Hey, I know you have a courtyard outside. You know, it's May in Sacramento. I'm willing to roll the dice. Can I pay you to put a table outside? And of course, the answer was yes. Sure. We're we're happy to do that if you know the risks. So we do have some vendors outside. So it's gonna, you know, you'll you'll go through the vendors on the way in. There'll be vendors all throughout the hall, and they'll be there, you know, from the time the doors open at nine all the way through till the end of uh awards at the end of the day.

So do you have any room left in the cart courtyard for more tables or are you sold out?

I believe we have room in the uh courtyard for tables. Uh so we can, you know, get the information for that. I'll put it on our website for our vendor coordinator, but they can always send me an email too through the website if uh somebody says, Hey, I'm willing to roll the dice and and have a table outside.

There's something you only do in California, yeah, really.

Right. Well, maybe you might be able to get away with that in Florida, but yeah, you're right.

Right, right. So uh it, you know, it's an IPMS style first, second, third contest. You know, last year we had over 400 models on the tables.

Wow, that's a nice turnout.

Yeah, yeah. We've really been working to, you know, expand our reach, uh, talking to the scouts locally, talking to different veterans organizations, schools. And as I mentioned, because of the theme we're doing this year, we've been getting the word out through the local gaming stores uh that normally wouldn't even know we exist. And and there's now flyers up in each of the gaming stores as well. As far as the the cost for uh the for adults 18 and over, it's $12, which is the it gives you two entries, two model entries, and then it's three dollars each additional entry. Juniors, seven years old to 17, it's four dollars for the first two entries, and then a buck each for each additional entry. And anyone six and under, no charge.

Now, do you have general admission for people who just want to come and look at the models and shop at the vendors?

We do not. You can walk in the door and look at the vendors and buy raffle tickets and look at the models, do everything except compete in the competition, and there's no cost for that.

Wow, that's good. That's nice. Well, when does your registration close for the show?

The online registration closes on May 13th. And how about on site? Uh on site, we'll close that up just before 12 noon on the on the day of the contest on May 16th.

Now, do you all have food on site? Is there low food at the facility or do you bring in food trucks or do you rely on nearby locations for because modelers are hungry people?

Yes, yes, they are. Uh no, we have we don't have any food at the venue, but we do have multiple fast food locations within about a five-minute walk from the venue. So it's pretty well located for food if you want to, if you don't want to bring your lunch bucket with you. And there is there's a parking lot, there's a free parking lot that the church owns, plus there's surrounding parking in the neighborhoods.

You you keep mentioning the raffle, so I assume you have a raffle.

Exactly. We we have actually two raffles. We'll do one in the 11, 1115 range, and then we'll do another one probably in the 230 range. We've we've done them in the past starting at like noon, and of course, that makes it challenging for anybody who's judging.

Right.

Uh they're they're trying to check raffle tickets while looking at kits, and that's that's no fun. So uh we're gonna do it at times where the judges can be a part of that process as well. Like I said, it is a an IPMS style first, second, third contest, and the awards we used to do plaques and and the uh acrylic uh type awards, and we realized that not not a lot of people hang those on the wall in their in their build room. So we switched last year to metal coins as awards, and and we got really good feedback on those.

Yeah, those are becoming very popular.

Yeah, so we're gonna do that again this year with the the one side of the coin will have the club logo on it, and the other side of the coin will have a themed image, and then first, second, or third for the the winners of each category. And and there are 50 plus categories, so a lot of people are gonna walk away with some intentional heavy metal.

Well, speaking of walking away with awards, we know you've got the theme award of heavy metal, the bare metal type finish. Do you have other than the cat normal category awards and best to show and all that, do you have any other theme or any other special awards?

We do. We do. Again, we're we're trying to take ideas from from the Mojovian podcast. We're taking it from all the other podcasts and other things that we pick up. So this year we decided we're gonna go outside of the genre and scale parameters. We're still having the the those, but we're gonna do a category that's resin only. Oh we're gonna do a 3D printed category, we're gonna do an all-metal category, like the uh metal earth kits, you know, that come flat and you make into something. We're gonna have a vacform category. And then the the final one, which is actually something that we talked about quite a bit for our theme this year, but we decided to go with heavy metal. But we're also gonna have a dedicated 250th anniversary of the USA's founding category.

So, and all those are special awards.

Uh, these are actual regular categories. Categories. Okay. So you can choose a modeler can choose, okay. I've got a 3D printed model. I can either put it in the category that is only 3D printed, or I can put it in the genre and scale-based categories that fit whatever that print is. Modelers will have a choice.

Be curious how that works out for you. That's interesting. That's kind of a different take right there for sure.

Yeah, and I've not seen that anywhere else before, so we'll we'll report back on that after the contest as to whether it's worth the time or you know, if you get one in each category, okay. Well, maybe, you know, maybe not. But I I I've got some interest from some modelers in our our clubs who who said, Oh, wait a minute, I do 3D printing. Maybe I can do something special and showcase that in the 3D printed category.

Well, you don't unless you experiment, you don't learn, you don't grow. So I'll be interested to see how that works.

SilverCon Fun Extras And Recap

Very true, very true. So it's gonna be a a good day. And and one thing that uh, you know, it's it's either gonna work well or it's gonna they're gonna tell me don't do it again. Throughout the day, I won't say hourly because it may be different than hourly. We're gonna have dad jokes over the pH system.

That's great.

Oh man. I I think Mike, that's about the response I'm gonna get a lot is a boy. Really?

Now you gotta make them good dad jokes, because there are good dad jokes and they're no Dave.

There's there's only one kind of dad joke.

No, no, there are good, there are good dad jokes.

But you're a dad, so you're biased.

Well, that's true.

On the receiving end, there's only one kind of bad or dad joke.

Okay, all right. I understand what you're saying.

But I might send you a couple. Yeah, that'd be great.

Mike actually Mike actually is specializes in those.

I do. I like to dump them on the the youngins at work.

Oh, nice. Nice. One of our club members posts online, and it's not just our club page, it's his own page quite a bit. Uh not almost almost every day he posts a dad joke, and you know, some of the real groaners and you know, others just say, okay, that that's clever.

All right. Well, is there any other thing unique about the show that you're doing?

You know, I I think that about covers it between the the unique categories and the the metal coins. And I was talking to one of our club members about it recently about the coins, and I said, Hey, look, you know, if you win or you know, you get a first, second, third, and for some reason you don't want to display the coin with your model, I weighed them. They're 39 grams each. So if you don't like them, you can use them as weights in some of your builds going forward. Well, that's a good take. Uh so between between the raffle and the vendors and the registration, the answer is bring cash, bring cash, bring cash. Sure. Yeah. And there is no ATM on site.

Okay, that's important. No ATM on site. Because when we go to HeritageCon, I rely on the AT at the museum from time to time. So that's good to know. So, so why don't you give us the who, what, when, where one more time to let everybody know what's going on?

Absolutely. Thanks, Dave. We'll do. So it's SilverCon, which is brought to you by IPMS Silverwings, uh, Saturday, May 16th. And it's at the Town and Country Lutheran Church, which is at 4049-4049 Marconi Avenue in uh Sacramento, California. Doors open at nine, judging at noon, awards in a 330th range. And the theme is uh heavy metal, best use of natural metal finish. And there is online registration, and that's open now. The website one more time is www.sacramento-model-club.org.

And we'll put that in the show notes so folks don't have to remember it. Yeah, great. Always useful. Always useful. Well, Drew, it's always a pleasure talking to you, and we look forward to seeing you face to face the next time, hopefully in Fort Wayne. I'll be there.

All right, that's good news.

And in the interim, please give us the post uh show report after all things are done and wrapped up. And we wish you all the success like we always do. We want every show we free feature to just kill it every time.

Yeah.

Excellent. I appreciate it, and thank you for getting the word out and helping us build this great hobby of ours. It's not dying. I've heard that, but it's not, it's it's growing.

All right, sir. Well, again, thanks for letting us uh feature your show. All right, you bet. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Dave.

Well, Drew sounds excited for a show. Yep. And I'll tell you what, my my brother did his initial B-52 training near near Sacramento, and he loved it. He loved that part of the country.

I'm sure it's not too bad out there, especially in this time of year.

Exactly. We got to find a way to get out to the West Coast, man.

Introducing Rocky Mountain Expo

Well, folks, if you got a good dad joke, send them out there. Apparently they're gonna do that over the PA, according to Drew. And check their show date. And if you get him some really awful dad jokes between now and then, uh send them on so he can annoy his crowd with them. Or get a lot of eye rolls, maybe I should say. Not annoy, but uh interesting thing to try. Yep. Next up, Dave, is uh Scott Gentry's show out in Salt Lake City. Yep.

Our good friend Scott's got this. Is their third year of uh really interesting and different concept for a show?

Well, Dave, we got a really unique one here. I'm excited to have these guys on. One of them's an old friend ours, Scott Gentry from the Plastic Posse Podcast. And he's run a show that's getting some good legs out in his neck of the woods out in Salt Lake City. Scott, how are you doing tonight? I'm good, Mike. Good to talk to you guys. Well, good. You've got one more there with you. Won't you introduce him or let him introduce himself?

Hey, fellas, I'm I'm Sean Earl, I'm president of Rocky Mountain Expo. Good friends with Scott for several years. All right.

Well, let's start right there. You say you're the president of Rocky Mountain Expo. Scott, what's your capacity?

I'm kind of the core ideal guy and uh relationship guy. And you know, Sean and I for years have kind of been uh commiserating about the way local shows have kind of moved and haven't moved, and so we decided to quit complaining and do something about it.

Well, let's start with uh what the show is by title. I think we've already said it, we say it again, and then uh when it is and where it is.

Yeah, you bet. So Rocky Mountain Expo is a more of a model exposition than a contest, and it's held in Salt Lake City a yearly this year for 2026. It will be held on May 22nd and 23rd, and you can find um all the details at Rocky Mountain Expo.com.

Scott, now how many years have you all been doing this revised Rocky Mountain Expo?

This is our third year. We started the first two years. Sean is a proud veteran. I'm super proud to be his friend. He's a retired uh command sergeant major, and he was with the Utah National Guard, and uh we used an armory of the National Guard for our two first years, and uh we're uh deeply indebted uh to the National Guard for allowing our show to kind of um be put on initially and then to grow from there. Unfortunately, we kind of, I don't know, Sean, we kind of outgrew um our size there.

Well, that's a great sign.

Outgrew it pretty quick. Yeah, it it they do shows there, or not shows, but uh they they'll rent out the the guard facility from time to time. Uh there's other groups that use the venue, and it just well, hey, why don't we give it a shot and see? And it was pretty cheap. I mean, it fit right within our budget for that very first year. And we knew right from year one that it was gonna be too big for our bridges, and that building wasn't gonna have. Able to house us for uh more than another year or two. And sure enough, uh last year was was just wow, it was just overly huge amount of people and number of models. We barely fit everything on the tables. But yeah, this year is gonna be fantastic with the new building and uh the new venue that we have. It's it's just gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous.

So the show is two days?

Yeah, it's uh both uh kind of a day and a half, but yeah, we start at uh 3 p.m. on Friday and go through till uh 6 p.m. the first night, and then in 9 a.m. to uh 6 p.m. on the Saturday. And that's uh we we started that last year, and uh that made the judging and also the number of seminars that we want to do and things like that much more comfortable and much more reasonable than a one-day show.

Well, that's another great sign that you're growing, that you you you have the ability and the demand for a day and a half show.

Yeah, it just seemed right out of the start that that one day just wasn't going to fit the needs of the the show and what what we wanted to do and where we wanted to go with it. And we we tried the uh the two-day show last year, and it was more of a first get things set up and then Saturday was the full day. But this year we'll be able to actually fit in a half a day of showing off models and getting people into the venue and meeting people. It'll be a little bit more involved, I think, than last year's was.

How do you register for the show? Do you have online registration? Do you have the ability to register at the show?

We we do both. Um, the way we prefer is to do that online, and so you can go to uh Rocky Mountain Expo.com forward slash registration. We'd love you to pre-register, or you can come to the show, uh, just show up and we'll register you there. But as you guys know, as a veterans of many, many shows, pre-registration is uh the way to go and get you in and to the good stuff a lot faster by doing it that way.

Open System And Modeler Focus

Amen. Well, since this show is quite different than what most of our listeners are going to be accustomed to, I want to jump right to that part and let you pitch what you've got going on here. And we can circle back and get all the other peripheral details at the end. But let us know why this show is special compared to others and all the details around that.

Inclusion Displays And Wild Builds

Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the things I want to highlight before I kind of get into this is our show, more than anything, we really wanted it to be different. We have a local IPMS club here in Salt Lake City. They do a show every other year. We have an Amps Club here, and so the more shows the better. Uh, but we definitely wanted to be a little bit different. And so one of the things that uh we've done is as we've gone to other events, uh, you mentioned Mike MMSI and also model the model mania show that the Northwest scale modelers Tim Nelson and Jim Bates and that great group of people put on in Seattle. And as we've gone to different events and sort of benchmarked what they do, we really came up with a vision of of kind of maybe a little bit different way to look at at model shows. And you know, Mike, you and I have talked about sort of there's a lot of clubs, whether they're IPMS clubs or just independent clubs that are going with gold, silver, bronze. But we actually kind of took it a little further than that. And we're we're using a show that's really truly based on the open system, similar to what they use at MFCA or MMSI, originally uh pioneered by Shep Payne. So it's not just the way that we award, you know, the recognition for the models, but uh the way that we do it is different. We don't have any categories because our show is about the modelers rather than the models. And so we want to focus on the people. And what we do is we have our guests come in and they put all their models, ships, tanks, planes, cars, all together in one display, and we give them a great big, huge name tag that clearly shows who that person is. And this year we've actually taken an additional step of issuing to all of our guests a mandatory name tag that you have to wear. And the goal of all of this is to make sure that not only is your work on the table and inspiring other people and you know there to be recognized, but also it's to initiate collaboration and inspiration and conversation. We want people to meet other people and get ideas from other people and ask questions about what you know what they're doing and how their modeling has evolved and things like that, rather than just having, you know, your P40 in a sea of other 70 second-scale aircraft. And there's nothing wrong with that, but our focus is um let's talk about you and your work and how it's evolved irregardless of what the genre or the category or whatever, whatever else that is.

That raises a question, Scott. Do you all allow, like say, MMSI does, for a modeler to come in and put on the table like a multi-level display with his different, like you'd see at a figure show, a lot of times covered by velvet?

Yeah, absolutely. When it comes to what is allowed, one of our core values is really inclusion. And so if you build a model out of paper, we'd love to have it. If you build a model out of wooden popsicle sticks, uh, we'd love to have it. You know, we we we want to be really open to medium, to genre category figures, you know, gaming miniatures, whatever. We it's all welcome here, model railroad pieces. It's all we had a guy come to our first show as a great example. He had never been to any kind of regular, quote unquote traditional model show. Well, he buys Hot Wheel cars and then he takes the body off of the frame, takes the metal frame, melts it down into liquid metal, and then makes a mold and then recasts it and gives it a caricature similar to like what Tom Daniels used to do. Get, you know, bends the frame, make you know, puts great big giant wheels on it, but he brought an entire display of customized Hot Wheel cars. Cool. That was Ian Weber, wasn't it? Yeah, that was Ian, yeah, Ian. Yeah, stuff is great, really great.

Well, I I like the the tenets of what you're you're doing there. And I guess we heard last year, you know, Jake McKee. In fact, I think he even wrote a bit on his blog about the show last year and and uh his kind of take on it. And then you know, we featured the folks out in Northern California at the Wine Country Expo who took your show as inspiration and put their own spin on it and and conducted a show very similar out in uh Northern California. And then we got the show report back from their their show chairman just a couple days ago. And it was a lot of the same kind of stuff he was saying that Jake said. And I think there's there's something to that. I think uh focusing on the modeler instead of the models is a is a a welcome thing. And the way you can seek out people and find them a lot easier. I think that's huge for for what you're trying to do. I think this is a really, a really good idea. And I don't know. I wish you weren't so far away, man. Because we've only seen it at MMSI and it's kind of limited there because it's it's you know, it's heavily skewed toward figures there, obviously. But yeah, um, we understand the concept, but I think you know, if somebody like David and myself were more plastic modeler focused, uh we'd be a lot more comfortable in that environment around stuff we're more familiar with. So just uh really curious how this one goes for you. I'm sure it'll go well.

New Venue Vendors Seminars Food

Yeah, we're really excited. Uh Sean, you want to talk about maybe some of the uh new things that we have with our venue and displays and oh yeah, man.

The uh so we're at the West Valley Cultural Celebration Center in West Valley. Just it's basically a suburb of Salt Lake right here in the Salt Lake Valley. The uh the venue is it's absolutely gorgeous. I mean, you could house uh any kind of a national level show there easily. The the ballroom itself where the the display area is will have about a hundred tables in there. We're going with round tables this go, just to give it a shot, because if there's a hundred modelers, each modeler is gonna be able to have their own table to display their wares on. And so there's just a ton of room in this, in this, uh, in this ballroom area. It's got a raised stage that uh, you know, is uh the main focus of you know whoever's talking up there with two big, huge screens on either side, so we can display the uh the the venue schedule with seminars and such up there, so people always have an idea what what's going on and where. It's a two-level uh building. So upstairs we'll have is where that ballroom is, where the the main showroom is. There's a a huge reception area where we'll have like AK Interactives and and a couple other sponsors for the show. Kit Lynx will be there with his uh R71 with the sidecar, you know, for people to get uh up good looking and ask questions and whatnot. Downstairs is where we have the I'm trying to remember what the name of those rooms are. The seminars and the vendors and yeah, they're they're basically uh it's it's a huge seminar and vendor area. The vendors area is separate, but it it's it's a huge area. You could fit up to a hundred so tables in there for vendors, and so uh we're trying to get that filled at the moment.

Do you how many tables do you have left to sell?

You know, I think we're still about 30 table range, so we can still go upwards to at least 70 more tables. Yeah. Okay. So we've got plenty of room downstairs for that. The uh the seminar rooms will be all separated so we can have seminars going at the same time. Tons of guys coming in for demonstrations, like Rick Lawler will be doing one, John Bonani, Gary Baker, Jerry Moore. I mean, and then Jake McKee. We just got him his uh confirmation on there. It's just gonna be fantastic. Lots of stuff going on. The the outside area has got a huge lawn area. If you need to go out and take a walk, there's at least a hundred yards of sidewalk that you can walk out of the building and go out south. Weather's been really nice lately, so it's just just a great area, just a great spot to be in. We'll have vendor trucks out front for uh food wares. So, you know, if you get hungry, you don't have to go too far. And we even have like a couple joints really close by. What's the name of that hamburger joint? I'm trying to remember. Oh, yeah, we have purgatory.

They've got great hamburgers there. That's a great name for a burger place.

It's a horror-themed burger shop. It's great. You you guys, it would be it'd be awesome. But yeah, and and you know, kind of going back to our inclusion, we have Joe Porchet coming up from Vegas with a massive display and a seminar on Tom Daniels builds. Tom Daniels lives here in Utah, and he's bringing 24 linear feet by 30 inches deep of built Tom Daniels kits and also doing a seminar to go with that. And then we have the Vircos Vault people from Las Vegas. If you if you haven't heard that name, there's a collector who's very wealthy who buys uh mostly fantasy uh figures, has hundreds of thousands of them, and they also are building a museum and a school to help people with figure painting and bust painting. And so they're coming up to participate in it as well. So, you know, we've got your your traditional, you know, sort of plastic modeling seminars, and then we've got seminars from, you know, other maybe non-traditional amps, IPMS things like car building and figure painting, and even some modeling adjacent seminars, like Jim Bates is going to do a seminar on historical and technical research. So no actual modeling content, but certainly modeling adjacent content for people.

Well, as you well know, Scott, I'm a huge fan of seminars at shows. That I think that that is an under underutilized and underappreciated benefit of a show. So I'm glad you've got so many going.

Well, thank you, Dave. Yeah, we uh what we want to do is um one of our core values again is to make sure that we treat the people that come participate as guests. We get uh feedback after each show and we take that feedback very seriously. And what we're trying to do is make sure that if we can convince a Dave and a Mike to get on an airplane and come to our show, that when they walk out the door, they feel like it was worth the trip. They really enjoyed themselves.

Sounds like a good plan. You you've covered a lot, and I want to hit one more thing since you you just mentioned coming out there on an airplane. You mentioned the the food trucks and the and the cool restaurant there to handle all the hungry modelers. Is there any accommodations that the the show's arranged with, or is it every man for himself? You got something there close that's gonna help people who are coming in from out of state to have a place to bunk?

We don't have a dedicated hotel attached to the venue like a lot of shows will, but we do have a lot of hotels. The the uh West Valley um venue that we have is within less than 10 miles from the Salt Lake International Airport. Around the venue itself and by the airport, there are literally dozens and dozens of hotels. And there's also a lot of verbos and Airbnbs available in those areas as well. And so lots of places to get accommodations and and pretty price effective as well. A lot of the hotels in the area are in the $60 to $80 range on the lower end and the $110, $120 range on the higher end. So I think pretty reasonable by you know national standards.

That is, those are some good deals.

I'm gonna say driving in on uh if you're coming in via vehicle, I mean it's easy access from I-15 to uh Bangater Highway, was it 3100 south? It'll take you right straight to the venue. And even coming from the airport, it's uh pretty much a straight shot to where you need to be. And again, there's lots of easy access to the the venue itself with hotels being close by, all priced reasonably. So it'll be a good time had by all.

Well, all right. We've covered a lot. Scott, is there anything that you haven't touched on that you'd like to before we wrap up?

I think uh maybe just a little bit about the contest and and one other special feature which I'll save for last. But as far as the contest goes, we're we're a little bit different, a little bit more like the MMSIs and the MFCAs. Judges of the Rocky Mountain Expo are handpicked and invited. There's no volunteer judges, so there's nothing wrong with that. But we want to make sure, again, that our guests get a fair and thorough evaluation by people that that know their stuff, uh so to speak. And so if I were to get Kentucky Dave on a plane and get out to my show, I would ask him if he would consider judging 70 second scale aircraft for us. And again, it's it's all about sort of the experience that we do. And even though all of our judges are hand picked and hand selected, they are required to go through Scott's judges' training. I'm not gonna teach Kentucky Dave anything about what makes a great 70-second scale aircraft. But what I am gonna teach Kentucky Dave about is our values. And our values are we don't touch models, we don't do flaw hunts on our models. We look at things very much, again, in the Chep Payne vein of the open system of we look at the entry not from a place of what flaws are there, but how does the piece impact you? What does the presentation look like? Is it unique? You know, if there are flaws, we obviously take those into account, but it's really kind of more about the overall pressure of the piece and how that impacts them. And that's how that's how we do our judging. And so if you have an armor modeler, you're probably gonna have that looked at by John Bonani and people that know armor. If you have an aircraft, we have Robbie Knoffs and Jeremy Moore and really great aircraft modelers and and and on and on and on. And so that's really kind of an important part of what we do. We want to make sure people feel good. And you we also provide feedback in a couple different ways. Number one, our judges do a triage similar to again to MMSI, MFCA. They'll look at a modeler's display, they'll pick the model that they think gives them the best chance for the highest level of recognition. And so the first piece of feedback the modeler's gonna get is which one of their models that the judges like the best, because that's the one that will be evaluated. And then the second piece of feedback will be first of all, was it recognized and at what level? But then we also task our judges, and this goes back to the name tags we talked about, to once they're uh finished judging a modeler's display, to go seek out that modeler and have conversations. And so rather than writing a comment that just says, like, oh, there was a seam line or whatever, we want to actually give people feedback in person so that that modeler can ask questions and get meaningful feedback from those judges.

That's just that just sounds really great and a more much more positive view of how you how you judge entries.

Yeah, well, well, thank you very much. And our special feature is we feature one of the shortest award ceremonies in the nation. Yeah. Our target is 15 minutes, we go hard, we go fast, and we let people go have dinner. So that's that's a core value as well.

And that's about the same time that we'll do the uh the special awards. For instance, with Jill Porsche coming up, there I hear tell there might be an award for uh Tom Daniel Best of. So it's like here I am, uh a Russian armor modeler busting out my Tim Daniel Red Baron and putting it together. So I'm hoping to get it done for the show.

All right. Well, Scott, won't you give us the the W's again about where we can go find the show on the web and the the uh the venue and the date and all that?

You bet. So May 22nd and 23rd in Salt Lake City, Utah will be the 2026 uh RME. You can find out all the details at Rocky Mountain Expo.com. We also have a Facebook page which is Rocky Mountain Expo Official on Facebook where you can go get the details for what is needed there. Our venue is the Cultural Celebration Center, which is in West Valley, Utah. It's on the west side of the Salt Lake Valley. You know, like Sean said, it's kind of a suburb uh city. It's easy to find, but beautiful venue. You know, the main contest area has two glass walls. They're 40 foot high uh windows, uh floor to ceiling. It's a state-of-the-art uh facility. You're gonna be comfortable, you're gonna have a lot of great lighting, you're gonna meet a lot of great people. We have, as I mentioned before, more than 15 seminars to choose from. You're gonna have Steve Munsell and Rick Lawler doing demos right there so you can see how to use the AK products or the value gear resin. It's just, it's a really, really good time. And uh, if you can come join us, that's great. If not, maybe we can catch you in 2027.

Thanks for joining us, Scott. And we always wish this show success. And you you took a risk a couple years ago, and it's starting to pay off now, it looks like, and going to multiple days. And man, I'm not gonna say I'm not coming ever, but I hope to get a chance to come out there sometime and check this thing out because I hear I'm hearing nothing but positive from folks who've who've been to your show, and then even from folks who are using it as a blueprint for their own show. So keep up the good work and uh we'll look forward to seeing how it goes.

Well, thank you uh for having us on, guys, and we'd we'd be honored to host you. Want to do a quick shout out of our the rest of our board. We have Barry, Barry and Joan Biediger, uh Josh Buck, Brandon Mickelson, and Sean Schuler, and they're the rest of our really awesome, dedicated team that have helped put this show together, and we really want to express appreciation to eat each one of them.

Yeah, absolutely. And hey, get out there and pre-register. There's a we got a free tilte bag in it for you. Carries up to 55 pounds of models or tools.

Final Thoughts And Go To Shows

There you go. All right, guys. Well, we'll let it go. And again, all the success in the world. Thanks, fellas. Take care of you guys. Well, I was glad Scott and uh Sean Earl could join us for that segment. And uh I'm really curious uh what the new venue holds for those guys. I think his show's getting some legs here in the third year, and that venue change sounds absolutely phenomenal. And I'm glad they're they're working with them and they could they could get in there because it sounded like uh it could have potentially been a very expensive place, but it looks like something worked out.

Yep. In fact, I talked to Jim Bates today who had just purchased his airline ticket so that he could fly out to Rocky Mountain.

It sounds like they're gonna be packed with seminars and uh a lot of good social interaction via their format they're running the show in. So we wish those guys all the luck, man. We do, we do. Not sure they need it, but uh sounds like a lot of the folks uh we see regular on the regular on the uh interwebs are gonna be out there. So that's another one we need to get to. Yep. All right, folks. That is the show spotlight for May. We always encourage you to get out to a model show or a model event in your area if you can get to one. It's just so much fun.

It is, it is. So we are big fans of model shows, the so the interaction, the ability to meet friends, old and new. It is a really great part of modeling that a lot of people miss out on if they don't participate. You don't have to enter the contest, just go to the show.

Yep. Check out the vendors, check out the models, and talk to the modelers, man. You're gonna have a good time. Yes, you are. Well, that is the model show spotlight for May. So, folks, stay tuned for the 12-minute model sphere for the month of May coming up very soon. And uh, until then, Dave, happy modeling, man. Yep, happy modeling.