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Re: CBK BoxArt II at SM2012

Posted: November 11th, 2012, 10:46 pm
by PaulBradley
Big thanks to everyone for another job well done and thanks for taking the old ones to Airfix, Al!

Re: CBK BoxArt II at SM2012

Posted: November 11th, 2012, 10:52 pm
by Martin R
James,

It was good to meet you and the other elves! A 370 mile round trip in 12 hours is not my usual idea of a fun Saturday, but in this case it was worth it. The stand looked great, I was encouraged by the attention it got, and thoroughly enjoyed talking to you all. Oh yeah, and SMW was pretty good, too!

To cap it all, the traffic on the drive home was kind and the kids were happy at having daddy home before bedtime.

As you say, kudos to Al for leading the charge.

regards,

Martin

** SIG Leader Show Report **

Posted: November 13th, 2012, 1:43 pm
by JamesPerrin
Well my weekend started off on Friday morning and then nearly didn't happen. We were having carpet fitted on Saturday morning in the back bedroom and as I've done before I took the opportunity to locate and screw down any squeaky floorboards. Well I manage to put a screw into one of the central heating pipes didn't I :oops: :evil:

My modelling instincts kicked in and I grabbed a cocktail stick and jabbed in the hole before too much damage was done. I thought I got lucky when I was initially told I could get a plumber in the next couple of hours which would meant they would be done when Matt and I needed to leave for the show. Well they rang back and said it would now be 3pm, OK looks like I wasn't going to make Friday setup, I had to bite the bullet and phone the wife. Thankfully Ab had finished her meetings and could get home for 1:30pm

Plenty of time to unwind in the car as the traffic was very heavy and chucking it down with rain. We finally pulled into the Exhibition Centre after 4pm. We had a short wait to get into the small carpark at the back of hall 3. The staff were diligent and helpful in getting everyone in and out as quickly as possible. It was then a 10 yard stroll to where Tom and Al were waiting.

We had just our kits for the CBK table as Al and Tom had brought the rest. We did however have what seemed like MerlinJones entire CC SIG eligible collection! Tom did well not to get carried away and went for a considered and representative spread of aircraft, many of which were probably unique to the CC table.

On the CBK table things quickly fell into place and we just needed to leave space for Martin R and Ollie's builds which appear the next morning. In the meantime the life and soul that is Iain (ejsnotgrass) rolled up. We were done by 5:30 which was great as I needed to get a train to my folks in N. Wales and hour away where I was staying for the weekend.

As mention Hall 3 also had the Lynx, AMX-30, Dingo and Valentine DD. We faced the rest of the hall on one of the thoroughfares to the other halls. Saturday passed in a bit of a blur we all been kept busy on talking to punters throughout the day. I was glad I had made a point of picking up my Anson C.19 from Aeroclub on the way in.

The Sunderland grabbed a lot of attention sometimes just because it was an Airfix Sunderland and many people had memories of building the kit. Splash's 45deg base worked superbly as we because of the height of the large items we didn't use boxes to raise some of the low viewpoint models ups and something I wish I'd been brave enough to try. I may attempt so display my Dinah in a similar manner at Huddersfield. Martin's beautifully cinematic build attracted plenty of worthy praise. The photos don't quite capture the wide screen look of the actual thing. We learnt a few things about our builds and I think we'll make a couple of alterations to the builds and how we display them for the next show.

The blurred props generated a lot of chat and we directed many people to the website. I had intended to print out a few sheets for CBKers and friends (we can't sell stuff at Telford) but my pipe issue got in the way. Hence my extra post directing people to the images.

Sunday felt quieter but this might have been the fact that they was more space, for people to mill around. The tables in Hall 3 had plenty of room behind the desk so we didn't have to clamber over chairs and boxes to get in and out. There were still plenty of people looking at the stand, it seemed to do well with overseas visitors, a couple of guys from Zoukei-Muro took plenty of photos of the stand.

Al had done a lovely job of re-boxing many of last year's Box Art model for Airfix. As you may know not only are these going to Hornby Experience in Margate but also to an exhibition of Airfix Box Art at Hendon in the summer! I believe someone from Airfix managed to sneak away from their very busy stand to look at this year's display.

We were allowed to start breakdown a before 4pm as the Lynx and to got through us to get out of the Hall. It took all of us to work out the 3D Jigsaw that was one of Bruce's box of CC kits ;-) These large builds do pack very quickly and we were all done by 4:30pm.

A frankly exhausting but worthwhile weekend, a time to meet old friends, but faces to new and hopefully make some for the future. Great to see ShaunW, GeneralRocket, Greggers, Sarah and little Greg, Falcon, Shane, Ratch, DaveCov and many others that I might of missed or not realized who I was talking too!

Again the display only works because of the hard work people have put into building their models, manning the stand and volunteering their time to help run the show. Well done all!

PS I'll post some pics of thoughts on the rest of the show in the other thread.

Re: CBK BoxArt II at SMW2012 (SIG leader report added)

Posted: November 14th, 2012, 3:00 pm
by JamesPerrin
One question that I got asked at least a half dozen times was "Who painted your backdrops?" Maybe people were thinking we hired an artist and we only built the kits!

Re: CBK BoxArt II at SMW2012 (SIG leader report added)

Posted: November 14th, 2012, 7:51 pm
by mightymikeD
Splendid show, gents. Wish I could have been there.