Hi Bill -- Just having gotten home last night, this email is a bit late compared to yours.
I was one of the judges of the model contest. A bit more “local” lighting might have helped, but I can tell you the judging was painstaking and well done. I managed to critique one of the models for the entrant, but time forced us to pass on the rest (we were judging from early evening until 11:15, then again at 8 am the next morning). Sometimes, a critique of a model might also cause hard feelings for the entrant, which I would like to avoid. In this particular contest, there were MANY outstanding models which one easily could argue were perfect. Trying to split the very fine hairs was needed to chose a winner in many cases. Pieter Roos had two models which tied in points, and I made the subjective decision as to which I liked best, and the others agreed. There were also a group of models that had benefitted greatly from a new tool in the business – 3D printing – and they were extraordinary. We considered judging them under a separate category, but decided against it for the time being. However, while this technology is just another “tool” in the model builders’ arsenal, it does require a much different skill set than traditional model building, and might eventually be given its own class where the playing field is more level. Monte Heppe as contest chair will have to wrestle with that. One of the difficulties of judging is when the model isn’t the exact same thing as the information supplied. Sometimes the judges have to extrapolate what they know into what they see. It would help the judges immensely if full documentation is provided. This is also a double edged sword – if the model misses the mark as the documentation shows, it loses points that might otherwise have been awarded. In any case, congratulations to all the entrants for providing a very difficult contest to judge! Bill Winans ------------------------------- Folks .... Judging models is very tedious, the judge must know what the prototype is, or they can't accurately judge the model. I've witnessed NMRA judges wearing Binocular Magnifier Lens when appraising a model, however, I don't feel that our NASG judges are as stringent. Basically, it would be nice to have a "critique" after the contest. We do that at our photography contests. It's amazing the different concepts coming from the judges, many disagreeing with each other. But in model contests it is different and the winners are won on points, but it still would be nice to have critiques. Most likely this will never happen as after the judging's in our model contests, the room is locked up, later the models are taken home and that's it. I often wondered what was good and bad about my entry, but never had the opportunity to find the judges and ask so I accept the ruling and get on with my life. I don't even like to write about our contests, as I have caused some pretty heavy breathing because of my innocent remarks. Such is life, but I still like to enter my models regardless and I've been entering models since 1962 when I won my first Award for a pretty bad B&W image of my Jefferson Central Railroad Station at night. I was so proud! Frankly, I feel every entry should receive an award, boy, then would we have a lot of models entered! So, there! Bill FRaley
