Wonderfest 2007 Show Report
(Page Three - Iron Modeler Event)
(Friday, May 25th @ 4:30 pm – Beginning of the Iron Modeler Build)
I arrived at the pool area at 4:25. A quick trip out to my car to pick up my modeling supply box and grebbles that I brought – (parts from unbuilt model kits) – and I was ready to go.
The Iron Modeler Contest (IM) goes something like this: a mystery kit is supplied for groups of 3 or 4 to work on. Each participant’s entry fee are the grebbles, and each team uses the kit parts that they decided to hold onto, along with additional grebbles from a common pile in order to come up with a unique model entry.
The catch here – (other than no teams know ahead of time which kits will be supplied) – is that you only have 4 hours to complete your build, (which includes EVERYTHING, including painting and detailing). There were airbrushes, compressors and acrylic paints supplied for us to use.
This year the supplied “kit” (per se) was actually two sets of clear, plastic balls. (Plastic balls??? Who thought that up?)
The group that I had been able to join up with was named “Styrene Catharsis” – (don’t ask, I didn’t come up with the name…). - :~)
In addition to myself, our other two members were Andy Mihail (alias the Prince of Styrene II), along with Andrew Macdonald, (aka Scotaidh).
We initially started working on constructing a sort of bubble fighter/reconnaissance spacecraft, (using some elongated, pylon-shaped pieces). It was our thoughts to try to emulate the bubble fighters found in the Lost in Space Movie.
Included would be a Pilot and Co-pilot situated in one of the small half-circles, along with an ordinance & missile operator located in the second semi-circle – (that would be located on the other side of the fighter).
The larger clear ball was divided into two with a band of flexible sheet styrene inserted in between them to give a more oval shape. This subassembly would contain the engine and other spacecraft internals.
Again, we had planned on incorporating some of the elongated parts into attachment pieces for the bubble sub-assemblies. (However, we never ended up making it that far).
(Friday, May 25th @ 8:30 pm – End of the IM Build)
A very short 4 hours later and our time was up, (even though we weren’t finished…we really needed an additional hour or so to complete our task…Oh well…)
All completed modeling masterpieces were moved to a central table and a representative from each team had to deliver the background story and history of each piece.
Later, Scotaidh came up with the following cover story for our entry:
"It's a secret weather-control satellite, one of a chain of these in low geo-synchronous orbit. The color choice is obvious; it is armed for self-protection - many nations would attack if they knew the U.S. had weather control satellites in place, affecting them and (possibly) their space-space - (like 'air-space' but higher).
One end controls clear weather; the other end controls cloudy weather. The various antennae are suited to their purposes - the deep narrow one is for generating tornadoes, hurricanes, and other localized weather phenomena, and also for tight-beam communication; the wide shallow dish is for thunderstorms, drizzle, fog, and other wide-area weather affects, and for satellite TV."
Some of the stories told were just as entertaining as the pieces themselves. (…I particularly enjoyed the “Doctor Zim” monologue, (from Johnny Quest), for the two robotic-spiders that one of the teams had created).
Ultimately, the winner was determined by the loudest applause for each entry, (which looking back on it, wasn’t very scientific at all, since I’m SURE the winning entry was determined not by a large number of those rooting, but by some VERY LOUD folk from the associated team!) - :~)
Regardless, a nice plaque was awarded to the winning team and all entries were moved to one of the Wonderfest model rooms.
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