Fleet Air Arm Model Show
26 February 2000

By: Mike & Lynn Dunn

We arrived shortly after 10:00am, on a beautiful Spring day, in front of the RNAS Yeovilton base, where the Museum is located. Ushered into an overspill car park (hey, this Show only just opened!), we then headed through to the front of the Museum. As they are currently refurbishing the Concord Hall, the Show is being squashed into the remaining areas - and squashed is the word!

The first thing on the agenda - the dealers tables!!!! We headed straight through the Swordfish Centre, and over to the White Ensign Models stand. After saying a big "hello" to Caroline, Dave (nursing a bad back), and Peter Hall (who was helping out again), we rummaged through Caroline's bits........! I must say that the completed models and dioramas are a great advert for their kits - they are exceptionally well-done. If you haven't already looked at the HMS Edinburgh diorama, get over to the WEM site when you've finished here! The photos don't do it justice - it's even better in real life! Well, after bankrupting ourselves (Lynn's fault - she just HAD to have an HMS Brilliant.....), we started wandering around in earnest. Next up wre the various stalls in the Swordfish Centre. Unfortunately, and this was reflected all over the Show, ships were in the minority to planes and vehicles......oh well, there's always the WEM stall to go back to! So, what else was there? Well, just along from WEM was a lovely 1/72 RCN Snowberry, built from the Revell kit, with working lights and two-channel radio control, built by Mike Seel. A very nice model, and a charming gentleman, one I hope we can welcome to the ranks of the SMMLies soon. Another good model in here was the paddle steamer Emperor of India, equiped for war-time duties and armed with anti-aircraft weapons. Now, how often do you see a model of this type? The last set of ship models in this room was a Graf Spee, and several submarines, including the Los Angeles class you can just make out on this photo. I was hoping to get some more for the sub fans, but the crowds were too many..... Next time, maybe.

Moving out of the Swordfish Centre, we went into the Museum itself. As mentioned above, they are in the middle of refurbishment, and organised chaos reigns! Add on the fact that we are in the school holidays, and then add in the attendees for the Show......Heaven help the unprepared visitor!

As you can see, this is the World War One Hall, and space to breathe is VERY hard to find! And this Hall was easy to negotiate compared to the World War Two Hall! In here, the aircraft are on display for you to walk up to and touch - until you add all the stalls and eager modellers! Space was at a total premium - trying to look at models on display was impossible on occasion - a big shame, as many of them were of high quality - a lot of time has been spent on them, regardless of model type or scale. Things were made worse with people trying to see what various vendors had for sale, and other people trying to get past...... Next year should be better, once the other Hall is back up and running - unless they revamp one of these as well!

Often, Lynn and I were separated because of the crowd flow - with Lynn having a bad arm, she was forced into going with the crowd, and if I didn't notice (as happened on quite a few occasions), there she was gone. On the other hand, when we did manage to find each other again, we had generally seen a model or display that the other was interested in. For example, at either end of the WWII Hall were some very good models - I found a collection of aircraft carriers that Lynn wanted to see, and she had found some O and P class RN destroyers I just had to photograph! Sorry Shane! But I must admit that Shane's HMS Onslow would have looked VERY good with these....I look forward to his article in Internet Modeler on building her.

Eventally, we decided that we had seen all we wanted, and struggled back through the various Halls (and we MEAN struggled) to the exit, via the Museum shop of course! It was nice to see that they had made an effort themselves, as they had more kits than usual available, and also had good reference books - not only for the various ships and aircraft (we expect this, after all), but also books on ship and aircraft modelling techniques - a VERY nice surprise!

What about the competitions? Well, that's a VERY good question, one I had for Dave Carter on our way out (Caroline being off judging at the time). Apparently, instead of having an area where the various entries for the competitions could be displayed, they were scattered all over the Halls, on the various tables....so several of the photos above could be ships entered into the White Ensign Trophy competition, and may even be a winner! Me, I think that this is a daft way of holding the competition, but what do I know....?

For more photos, please follow this link