PORT TOWNSEND — The North Olympic Peninsula Modelers Society’s eighth annual scale-model show and contest Saturday is expected to draw modelers and enthusiasts from all around the Pacific Northwest.
“We get a wide range, from young people to those who built models as a kid and have recently started up again,” said Larry Speelman, the organization’s treasurer.
The show will be from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday on both floors of Building 204 at Fort Worden State Park.
Show admission is $5 for adults and $3 for youths ages 9 to 17, with children younger than 8 admitted free when accompanied by adults.
Admission includes half-price entry to the nearby Coast Artillery Museum and access to the park for the day. No Discover Pass is needed.
Admission also includes parking, after the group struck a deal with the park that required a rent increase in exchange for free participant parking.
Attendees should park near the event. When they pay admission, they will be given passes to put on their cars.
300 scale models
About 300 scale-model entries from the United States and Canada will be on display, including detailed scale models of individual subjects and dioramas, such as cars, airplanes, military vehicles and trains as well as fantasy, science fiction and figurines.
Speelman said most of the models are from kits, but with details and personality added by the modeler.
“No one at the show builds the models exactly out of the box,” he said.
“If you are building a particular plane, you make it specific to a plane that flew a certain mission or was flown by an individual,” Speelman added.
Speelman, who mostly builds model airplanes, configures the models with the coloring and serial numbers of those planes and often gives them to the person who flew it in the past.
Participants can register their entries from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Judging will take place from 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Awards in a variety of categories will be handed out at 4:15 p.m.
The contest entry fee for an unlimited number of models is $5 for adults and $1 for junior modelers younger than 18.
An hourly raffle for model kits and supplies is planned. Vendors will represent hobby shops, and individual collections of model kits will be on display.
The modelers society is a local chapter of the International Plastic Modelers Society .
The club meets the first and third Thursdays of each month at 7 p.m. at the Odd Fellows and Rebekah Lodge, 11323 Rhody Drive in Port Hadlock.
For more information, including entry forms, visit www.nopms.net.
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.