AMPS Report

I managed to make it up to Havre de Grace on Saturday for the AMPS show. I was going to try and finish the M4A3 and T-34/76 kits so I could enter them in the competition , but remembered my Tiger debacle from a few years ago (I melted my Tiger chassis under a light bulb trying to speed the paint drying process). So I decided to just take the M10, and enter it. I had to do a quick super glue job for a turret figure that had become dislodged, and it was off to the contest table. I was hoping to get another silver, but was pleasantly surprised later that night to be awarded a Gold! Unfortunately, it's probably the last Medal I'll get at AMPS, as now I have to compete as an "Advanced" modeler.

I was also really looking forward to two events on Saturday. First there was a behind the scenes tour of the Aberdeen Proving Ground Museum at 10AM, then at 2:30 there was the Missing Lynx Braille scale get together. So right after I registered my model I did a quick walk through of the contest room and vendor room, then off to the Museum. The Museum tour was great, I took hundreds of photos. After the tour my buddy and I went for some lunch (12:20PM), I looked at a copy of the schedule and found out that the Braille Scale meeting was moved to 11AM! Duh! I was quite bummed, even ended up missing Steve Zaloga's talk. So we headed back to Havre de Grace for a retail therapy.

It was a rather intense therapy session, don't tell the wife! I managed to find copies of the Nuts & Bolts series Marder III books [Sd.Kfz. 138 & 139] for a somewhat reasonable price. I also found the three Kiwi Armour series books I was looking for when I was in New Zealand, who would have thought. I also managed to spend a few dollars at the Tiger Productions tables, picking up all manner of diorama accessories. Lastly I managed to spend a few dollars at the Archer tables, picking up many of their Allied dry transfers. All in all quite the hall. My wife and I head to New Hampshire next weekend for a stitching show. I guess I'll have to encourage her to do a little retail therapy so I don't feel so bad wiping out the checking account by myself!

To make matters worse the announced that they were doing the best of judging right in the middle of my shopping spree, err therapy, so I didn't get to make it to the contest room for my normal picture session. Hopefully one of the other "Braille Scalers" shot lots of pictures, because quite a few models were back at the judging table when I did my only walk through.