BPMS Bulletin: January 2023

BPMS Bulletin 

by Bobby B2 Blue Pokorny 

Welcome to 2023! We hope you had a happy, healthy and a safe Holiday Season. 2022 ended brilliantly! We had 31 models on the tables, most were for the theme contest. Plenty of tasty treats and cheer to go ‘round!

December Meeting

AURORA THEME CONTEST: The theme contest to mark the 70^th Anniversary of Aurora Models (celebrated on the 72^nd, Thanks COVID) finally happened and we had some gorgeous work on the tables.

 

1^st           Jake Moon                          Maserati 3500 GT

2^nd          Bob Pokorny                   Joseph Stalin IS-3

3^rd           Kevin App                           Phantom of the Opera

HM       Russ Holcomb                                Black Falcon

                Kosta Lukyanov            UH-25

                Frank Coluccia               Moon Bus 

The winners of first, second, and third places got awards emblazoned with an early Aurora poster that our master award maker Ed Dietrich  digitized for the anniversary! We’d also like to thank the sponsors – Joe Bergman and Kevin Kilkenny for sponsoring another theme fun for the members to build for.

AWARDS CEREMONY: The group voted and I tallied the numbers all year. Here are the results:

Air

1^st           Frank Colucci

2^nd          Charlie Nelson, StevenNelson

3^rd           Ray Whitton, Rommel Xu

HM       Russ Holcomb

Armor

1^st           Guy Ferrara

2^nd          Howell Serkin

3^rd           Tom Knoll

HM       Mark Mullen

Figures

1^st           Joe Bergman

2^nd          Howell Serkin

3^rd           Don Illjes, Mark Mullen

Sea

1^st           Kevin App

2^nd          Joe Bergman

3^rd           Charlie Nelson

HM       Kosta Lukyanov

Science Fiction

1^st           Mark Mullen

2^nd          Joe Bergman

3^rd           Gordon Cheung

HM       Julio Guadalupe

Miscellaneous

1^st           Kevin App

2^nd          Kosta Lukyanov

3^rd           Bobby Pokorny

Most Popular

1^st           Qtr        Frank Colucci

2^nd               Qtr        Rommel Xu

3^rd           Qtr        Charlie Nelson

4^th          Qtr        Julio Guadalupe

 

Frank Tripoli Memorial

TOP GUN AWARD

JOE BERGMAN

 

Great work! Now the slates are clean and time to start a new year!

HOLIDAY DESSERTS: Thanks to everyone who brought in some goodies, and there was plenty!

raffle: We didn’t have a raffle during the meeting. It will return next month.

WEEKLY ZOOM: Even though we are back to having regular meetings, the weekly ZOOM will continue! New day and time: Tuesdays at 7:30 PM. Every week EXCEPT for weeks with an in-person meeting. 

On the agenda: JANUARY

2023 Model Pledge: Looks like we got this working nicely now! Bring in an unbuilt model between January and APRIL 2023 to declare as your pledge model. Please have it finished for OCTOBER 2023, for a display. After October you may bring back your pledge for the November meeting for the last contest of the year. For your efforts you get an additional FIVE Super Raffle tickets for completing your pledge! Sweet! Easy enough!

KIT SALE: Bring kits to sell and cash to buy with. There’s no tab at this bar!

JUNE THEME:

JUNE 16^TH 2023

REMEMBER THE MEMBERS

THEME CONTEST

During the quarantine the BPMS shaken with losses of multiple members To remember them, the club will have a remembrance contest to honor those members and what they built in the hobby. It will be a simple contest, since the BPMS is all-inclusive and we love all branches of the hobby, so you can display what you like. We will be preparing special awards for the four specific members we are focusing on:

·        Tim Greeman: he primarily built 1/72 armor, loved Shermans, and built occasional figures.

·        Ray Keegan: he built everything but was known best as a sci-fi guy, esp Star Wars and Gundam.

·        Joe Barrett: known for his 1/35 WW2 German armor and cars, he also enjoyed sci-fi.

·        Andy Yanchus: his name is well known in our hobby, especially for his role in Aurora in the early days. Mostly he built sci-fi. Figures, and loved toy conversion. He, also, sponsored one of your earliest theme contest: Humor in Modeling.

There you have it. It will be easy to build for, and we hope to see plenty of work on the tables for this one. Feel free to contact the sponsors with and questions or comments!

SPOTLIGHT MODELER:

FRANK “GRAIL” GIALLAMBARDO

In NOVEMBER we voted Frank in to join our ranks. He found out about the BPMS on Facebook and came to the February 2020 meeting. Then COVID came around and the quarantine. If you come on the ZOOM meetings, you are probably already familiar with Frank. He’s been a resident of Staten Island since 1962, where he went to school, and he, currently, teaches ESL. He doesn’t only like models; he plays the bass and 12-string guitar, classic rock, original music, chess, baseball, reading and comic book collecting.

 

Like many of us, Frank’s first exposure to the hobby was during his childhood, when his father brought him to a hobby shop. He thinks his first model may have been an Aurora Dracula, and having just celebrated 72 Years of Aurora at the BPMS, she shares the same start as MANY of us in the hobby! 

 

That first figure help set him along his path in the hobby. Frank enjoys figures and science fiction, but we have also seen him working on a historical ship on the Zooms, so his tastes vary greatly. He likes to work on his models, like many of us, on the kitchen table. He suggests that following instructions is a good way to avoid problems during a build and that the internet is a valuable resource for references and learning skills. He also hopes to find models of Indiana Jones and Napoleon Bonaparte to build to apply those skills to in the future. He hopes to find more of the models from the 1969 Aurora catalog being offered, and with companies like Atlantis out there, he might just get his wish!

 

Frank has a similar concern as many of us. The Hobby doesn’t seem to be attracting younger modelers anymore. What would it take to remedy this?  Would advertising help? Maybe some lines of inexpensive models to attract the youngsters. Something needs to be done before the hobby vanishes.

 

In closing, Frank would like to offer us some Wisdumb  --- "Don't get glue on your fingers as you put the model pieces together." Yep! We have all been there!

~BP

EDITOR’S NOTE: After more than 20? 25? years of writing the BPMS Bulletin, I am handing over the reins to the capable hands of Kevin Kilkenny. Thank you for the opportunity to serve the club in this capacity for so many years. It’s been a fun ride. Like Douglas Adams wrote, “So long and thanks for all the fish!” 

~Your humble narrator, Bob Pokorny

Meeting date:

January 20th, 2023

People start shwoing up by 6 PM. 

See you at the BBSC!