Messages from Friends after Winning Chapter of the Year for 2008

Dear Members:  It is my pleasure to announce to you that the IPMS/USA  Chapter of the Year Award went to none other than IPMS MANILA !!!

Please help me in congratulating IPMS MANILA in this great accomplishment that not too many chapters have experienced..

WELL DONE, MANILA !!!!!!!!!!  
 
My hope is that all my chapters will win it sometime !!   So, don't delay, do your part....   Remember , This is a hobby for all modelers!

Modeling at Sea

by Don Olson

Don poses beside what could be a "Big Bang"

Modeling at sea has the extra challenges not found in your home or apartment.  To start with the basics, the shear placement of being on a ship brings us to the fact that a ship moves your entire universe constantly pitching and rolling. So having a stable place to work at is almost impossible until we reach port and are docked at the harbor.

I have a small room with a size of about 20x10 feet. As a Bosun Mate, I have the luxury of having this  room for myself. Believe me that being at sea for long periods of time, this is great to have a fairly quiet place for yourself and to set up a small work table to build on.

Due to the regulations on ships I am not able to do any painting, weather it is bottle or spray, so I build most of my kits in subassemblies .

My 1st kit on this ship (USNS FLINT T-AE-32) was a Hasegawa FA-18F Super Hornet, I built the landing gear and wings and some pylons. With AFV's you can build much more, almost the entire kit, less the "boggie" wheels and small parts to be added on after the base painting.

Packing the kits for mailing home is a challenge as well and is an art in itself. Luckily I have access to lots of bubble wrap and packing materials.

I had finished an M2A2 Bradley IFV O.I.F. and as I write this article, I am  building a Challenger 1 (Mk1) by Tamiya. I have several other kits to do, ranging from an M-60 and the   M-113 and an M1A2 Abrams. I also found an M551 Desert Storm by Academy which I intend to do soon.

My tools are your basic set up of files - knives ,cutters and tweezers. I use regular  liquid  cement and the "Extra Thin" version from Tamiya Modeling Glue and a tube of super glue .

Living on a ship affords you lots of idle to build. In most days, you have nothing to do for 12 hrs and if you're unlucky could turn into 15-18 hours. I'm on an Ammunition Ship now and we bring lots of different types of "ammo" all over the world.  So when I'm not moving the real steel around here, I'm building the scale versions of them in my room. That keeps my sanity intact.

Don Olson
 

Note: Don Olson is a member of IPMS Manila. He is a mariner for the US Navy. When on vacation, this dude is sure to be back here in the Philippines.

" Just thought I 'd send you some photos of an Asian festival that we recently had here in Miami. It is a great time, and I attend every year, specially for the foods and girls!!  
 
As you can see, I took a picture under the Phillipines flag to salute your club for Chapter of the Year!  Enjoy!!" .

Jorge Moreyra,

Region 13 Coordinator,

 IPMS USA

IPMS Manila members share events and their personal accounts of people and places beyond our borders..

Aloha from Hawaii: Visiting IPMS Hawaii

I met the guys at IPMS Hawaii (Battleship Row) last year when I visited the islands just before summer vacation. So this was going to be the second time around. I arrived in Honolulu in the morning of May 26 and immediately called Val Bueno who is my point of contact for IPMS Hawaii. Val's the editor and webmaster of their very informative newsletter and website the latter can be accessed at http://ipmshawaii.tripod.com/index.html. I then met him later in the evening and we drove over to the meeting place at Pearl City High School. Arriving there I was reintroduced to the guys there who remembered me from last year. The club president, Brad Sekigawa and others asked me questions about the state of modeling and clubs in the Philippines and were very much fascinated at the number of people in the hobby in Manila alone. They were especially fascinated with my account of interaction between some clubs in Manila. We had a lot of laughs shared about that! I made sure to bring two 1/72 tanks in my luggage and kept them stored in small and tough plastic containers. These models were displayed while the meeting began and I was asked to give an account of my experience in building them and share some tips and thoughts. Several other members of the club also gave their accounts on the models they brought over. It was a varied presentation of kits and subject matter ranged from sci-fi to historical. There was also a very informative slideshow presentation by Glenn Boss of a super gun in the Barbados designed by the late designer Gerald Bull who was said to be involved in Saddam Hussein's early WMD program and who was suspected of being assassinated by the Mossad. All in all it was a very educational and exciting meeting and for me it's my contribution in strengthening the global camaraderie we have as modelers. I really would like to extend my thanks to Val, Brad, Glenn and the rest of the great guys at IPMS Hawaii for the warm hospitality they showed to me. As they say in Hawaii, "Mahalo nui loa!" which means thank you very much! You may check for further details of the meeting at http://ipmshawaii.tripod.com/gallery/May2007/May2007.htm.

IPMS Manila is declared COY for Region 13 - In an email sent by IPMS USA's Foreign Liason Director, Glen Broman, it has been declared that IPMS Manila is Chapter of the Year Region 13 for the year 2006.  As his email to me wrote; " Can you provide me with a mailing address for your plaque for Region 13 Chapter of the Year? I have finished getting it engraved and it is ready to send. Congratulations again. Glen Broman ".  Immediately, all the officers were informed about this great news. Soon after that, the news was posted in the club's Discussion Forum and the Yahoo Group.

Every year, IPMS USA's 13 regions vote for the best Chapter for each of the said regions. To be selected Chapter of the Year for a region, every club's accomplishments will be reviewed and compared with each other.  Just last 2005, IPMS Manila won 2nd place for Chapter of the Year for Region 11 (when it was still with Region 11) rallying behind IPMS Fresno by only 3 points!  That itself inspired the club to "Go for Gold" by continuing on its effort to serve its members well, boost club membership and morale and help the hobby to grow. All thirteen winners of these regions are candidates for Chapter of the Year Award for the entire IPMS USA.   As 2006 club president, Jun Villalon, said, "I really never noticed that the club has been doing so well until this news came out. We just kept working, kept things moving and kept having fun. Next thing we knew, the year was over and a new President-elect was on his toes working as we did.".  Now led by Mitch Doren,  IPMS Manila have a full schedule bringing more excitement to the members and to the scale modeling community. With school year 2007 about to start, the club is also looking forward to encouraging the younger generation to get into scale-modeling-bandwagon as well.

This milestone is shared by every member of IPMS Manila. It is also representative of all Filipino Modelers here and around the world. If we just keep ourselves focused on the betterment of this hobby, then we can all be a "model" the world will look upon so well.

For our club's motto is: BY MODELERS - FOR MODELERS!!!

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