Last weekend our club headed down to Eastbourne on the south coast to display at the annual Hailsham club show. This is a big show which has more or less replaced the sadly late-lamented 'Southern Expo' I was pleased to see a large number of categories in the competition including a 72nd aircraft category. Surprisingly enough a Messerschmitt took 'Gold' in both 72nd and 48th scale- trust me to go and enter a Skyhawk! And the 48th scale Lancaster didn't place either, by far the most impressive piece looking at the tables overall (IMHO).
A couple of points struck me re the competition. First, there were so many categories and quite a few had no entrants at all. Perhaps 'cost' was a factor here - a £2 entry fee was £1 too much in my view. Also in my humble opinion those categories that had just one entrant should not automatically receive a 'Gold' - the model has to 'earn' it. Secondly the judges were chosen from among the clubs - a great idea in theory, but if a judge recognises or is familiar with a colleagues model then there will inevitably be 'biais'. Thirdly should a model missing 'parts' (perhaps lost in transit, as happened here) be placed above models that are 'complete'? An Eduard Bf 109 (Bartels 'red 13') minus its rudder received a 'Bronze'. I'd be interested in your opinions on this and on model competitions in general. I've only just started entering model competitions, have yet to be 'placed' anywhere, but quite enjoy the process and the 'competition' and am hoping that striving for a 'gong' might just help improve my modelling. Of course this probably means that I am going to rather disappointed every time I enter a competition - we'll see how long this lasts! A view of the models on the competition tables below;
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