The Blacksheep Squadron had its display, working area, and ran the Build-Fly-and-Take operation for the kids in the Education Area of the AMA EXPO as usual. We went through hundreds of Skystreaks during the two and one half days the show was open.
I was so busy demonstrating tissue covering and shamelessly promoting both Guillow's kits and my own that I did not have time to take many pictures. Most of the pictures attached were taken before the show opened on Friday or as the show was nearing closing on Sunday. Most of the children in these pictures belong to the vendors at the show. While the show was open it was an absolute zoo! We had the shrieking of the children and the head banging rock music that the 3D RC people were using as a sound track to their flight demos in the next ballroom. All this and talking to the people that came by the table after three days I was exhausted.
Consider the picture of the mass launch contest that was taken a half hour before the show closed on Sunday.
We held the mass launch contests every half hour during the show giving small prizes. Most of the time during the show that scene would have had 40 or 50 kids in it.
It's amazing how many people come by and are completely surprised that Guillow has released new kits. Smith Brother's Hobbies had a sales booth in the Education Area (Again, the only place in the whole show one could buy stick and tissue.) and several people after visiting my display/demo table went right over and bought a Porter, Beaver, or an Edge. I know this because most of them came back by the table to show me their purchase.
On Saturday, a man showed up at my table with his two sons, both Boy Scouts. The younger one pointed at the red Porter on the table and said, "Look! A Pilatus Porter!" He was the only one during the whole show, besides myself, who pronounced Pilatus properly. I remarked upon that whereupon they all replied in unison, "We're Swiss!"
I heard many people remark that they wanted to get back into stick and tissue again. From what I heard there are a lot of people who are bored with simply buying and flying. What's really strange, and a bit frightening in the big picture, is how many kids are absolutely surprised, and fascinated, that you can BUILD these things.
Dave Gee proved the point by building a reproduction of a pre-war, 48", Comet kit of a Curtiss Robin during the show. He had a chess clock in front of him that he turned on while working so that the elapsed time could be displayed. He completed it in 13.1 hours and successfully flew it (A free-flight model that size indoors!) before the show closed on Sunday.
Don Butman had his usual display of immaculate models and was demonstrating covering with plastic film. He has a habit of building a no cal version of any model he builds. Since he is building an Edge for this year's "G" Challenge he also built a no cal Edge. He flew it several times during the show and it performed very well.
The main exhibition hall was filled with every kind of RC and ARF and RTF thing you could want. There were also booths from the AMA, and local clubs, component vendors. There were also special interest meeting sessions, presentations by guest speakers and a ballroom with a model airplane swap meet.
'There was also a static competition in several categories, with the models entered displayed on table around the edge of the exhibit hall.
And, yes there are even some things that are not airplanes in the static display and being sold in the booths. This included a line of large scale WWII tanks that the vendor occasionally had wandering around the convention hall like olive drab R2D2s. (Sorry, no pictures of them this year.)
One display made me wonder if the trend towards giant scale RC had finally gotten out of hand.
Anyway, like the holiday season, it's done for another year.
