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TamiyaCon IX - A Show Report

A club with a view

The club meeting was great. There were of course a bunch of guys there who I did not know (or who knew me). But many people brought some kits and projects (some in progress) to show the group. Coming in I was immediately taken with a diorama put together by Joseph Neumeyer of Dynamic Dioramas. This piece features the 1/16 scale Tiger II I saw at SCAHMS and a 1/15 scale Verlinden Willey's jeep (both made by Charles Reading).

In Rhodes workshop I ran discovered another wonderful build. A 1/9 scale Sherman tank being built by Andrew Myers. Andrew has been working on 2 of these builds on-and-off for the past 5 years. The photos speak for themselves as to the amazing amount of work required to fabricate this tank from scratch. All pieces were either cast in resin or scratch built. Including the 1000+ pieces it will take to make the tracks. The figures are based off of the 1/9 Rosengrant figs but again highly modified and added to. Eventually Andy will add a figure to depict his father (who crewed such a tank) as that was the focus piece of this labor-of-love.

While Andy's job is in special effects (currently working on pickup shots for Spiderman 2), it was Mike Bishop from Monroe Perdue who owned the night in terms of effects. His 1/35 Renault tank came complete with flashing LEDs to simulate fire and REAL smoke! The smoke effect was harmlessly created using the same material used to create smoke for scale railroad engines. Nice job Mike. (Mike has actually submitted an article on this project so stay tuned for that. - Jim)

There were several other nice kits on display. Here are more:

Eventually after much carrying on and rowdy behavior the group settled down to discuss the future of their club. I will leave the topics of these discussions for them to unfold as they see fit. But suffice to say I see a very strong core of modelers in the Southern California area evolving into a much bigger group than what they originally started out as... AMPS LA.

After the meeting I met Jon Tamkin of Mission Models. He let me know that he would be at the shop on Sunday if decided to drop by and I promised I would try.

When the meeting broke up I only had to find a hotel... at 1:00am! Luckily Mike had given me an idea where at least one decent hotel was in the area. Of course my plan to find a "cheapie" hotel was somewhat scrapped when I realized that the term "cheapie" in the Encino area is not exactly the same as some lazy town along an Interstate. $105 dollars later I had a room. It was good to sleep, and I did, till 8:30.