2012 Old Dominion Open – Hampton Roads Ship Model Society

From the March 2012 Logbook:

This past Saturday, the Richmond Chapter of the IPMS held the Old Dominion Open Scale Model Show and
Contest. For the first time, the show included a class for wooden ship models. HRSMS was the sponsor of this class and also sponsored the Best Maritime Entry award. The event was a huge success, with 67 classes drawing close to 750 entries.

The wooden ship model class had seven entries, six of those entered by HRSMS members. Ulrich Guenther took the first-place award with his Friendship Sloop and Heinz Schiller took third place with his model of the Chebec. The second-place award went to Len Zanitech from Pennsylvania for his highly detailed model of the USS Syren. Gene Berger also won an award for his submarine that was entered in the Submarines – All Scales class. They gave an award for the best maritime entry and that went to Ulrich Guenther for his Friendship Sloop model. That was quite an achievement as Ulrich’s model was judged against the other six maritime class winners. I feel that all of the members who were present when Ulrich received this award were proud of this accomplishment. It shows the high level of craftsmanship that exists within the Society and we all had a sense of pride as one of our own received the highest award for a maritime entry.

One model that received a lot of attention and drew crowds all day long was the eight-foot long U.S.S. Balao submarine entered by Gene Berger. It was truly entertaining to stand near this model and listen to the comments from the public. And the amazing thing about this model is that it is fully operational as shown by the pictures that accompanied the model. If you have not had the opportunity to see this model, you have missed out on a one-of-a-kind highly detail and crafted scale submarine.

I really appreciate the support of the members who were able to attend this event. Many spent the whole day at
this show promoting both our hobby and the Society. Our Club table drew many visitors, and we were able to
showcase our hobby with ship models under construction, literature and discussions of ship modeling in general. We had a great time and many of our members were seen purchasing kits from some of the many vendors that were present. The organizers of the event were also very appreciative of our participation and are hoping we will participate in future events.

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