About IPMS Birmingham

A branch of IPMS(UK) we are a club for modellers and those interested in modelling in Birmingham and surrounding areas, we welcome people of all abilities to attend our meetings on the third Sunday of each month - please see "About IPMS Birmingham" page for venue details and times.

Saturday 18 December 2010

December meeting cancelled

Due to the heavy snowfall over the past 24 hours, tomorrow's meeting/Christmas party has been cancelled.

The Hospice Trophy draw will take place at the January meeting, full details to be given in a future update.

Sunday 12 December 2010

November/December update

A lot has happened in November and early December, first there was Scale Modelworld on the weekend of 13th & 14th November and then there was the club AGM on the following Sunday so rather than trying to cover these in a single update separate pages have been created, to see them click on the following links:

Scale Modelworld

Committee Members and AGM

 Sunday 5th December the club attended the Midland Air Museum Model Show at Bagington.



Aeroplanes in the mist.
This is a small show with a few local clubs displaying their models in the heated education centre while a few hardy traders sell there wares in the unheated hangar. Of course this was one of the coldest weekends of the year and the day started with a freezing mist which at least gave the opportunity for taking some atmospheric photographs.

The club was represented by Peter Betteridge, Terry Walton, Gareth Thomas and Roland Turner.

December meeting and Christmas Party

The next meeting  will be on Sunday 19th December and as in previous years will be the club Christmas party. Members bring along food which is shared among the membership while those who have won monthly competitions bring back their winning models to voted on for the branch championship.

Another traditional feature of the Christmas party is the Hospice Trophy draw - everyone brings a kit, either a surplus one from their collection or one bought especially for the occasion, packed in gift wrapping which then goes into a lucky dip. Members pay £2 for each kit they draw and then are expected to build the kit by the February meeting when it will be judged, if the kit has not been built by this time then another £2 is paid with all proceeds going to the Acorns Hospice for terminally ill children. There are of course a couple of rules: 1) No swapping of kits, you build what you draw. 2) Apart from glue and paint you can only use what is in the kit - no aftermarket decals, photo-etch, resin etc. this in the past has lead to some fairly inventive use of  instruction sheets, decal backing paper and sprues. The Hospice Trophy usually leads to a good deal of humour with people seeking out kits of some fairly esoteric subjects, will this year see something even more unlikely than a plastic kit of a bus shelter in 1/76 scale with individual bricks?