Celebrating America’s 250th with the Red, White & Blue Revue

IPMS/Memphis Belle held its first-ever “Red, White & Blue Revue” contest during the July 25 meeting, and though the contest entries were mostly aircraft, the non-aviation entries took the top two spots. 

The winners of the IPMS/Memphis Belle Red, White & Blue Revue contest held on July 25, 2026.

In honor of the United States’ 250th birthday, the contest required entries to feature the colors red, white or blue in the finish of the build, outside of the national insignia, according to the rules set forth by Larry Montgomery, the club’s director of activities and frivolities. The build could be anything the modeler built, older or more recent.

German’s 1/35-scale British Scimitar done in a white     
UN scheme rolled away with first place. 

German Candia, one of the club’s armor builders, won first place for his model of an AFV Club British Scimitar in 1/35 scale. German and other armor builders had noted in the months leading up to the contest the difficulty in finding an armored vehicle with the required red, white or blue colors.

“It’s hard to find red, white or blue on a tank,” German said, while explaining his model.

He used the UN scheme for the reconnaissance vehicle, painting it white. The build was out of the box, except the flags, Verlinden figures, and the vehicle’s tankers. He changed the soldiers’ heads, swapping out the helmets for a British variation.

William’s Gundam Freedom in 1/144 scale,
armed with a blue and red shield, won second place.

Second place went to William Foutch, one of the club’s junior members, for his Bandai Gundam Freedom. William said he built the 1/144-scale Gundam in one day. The figure is white with blue, red and gray accents. Though some of the parts needed to be superglued together and the figure’s backpack was backwards, he said it all went together pretty easily.

Stan’s 1/48-scale A-4E Skyhawk done with
the “Memphis Marines” scheme won third place. 

Stan Parker took third place with his Hasegawa A-4E Skyhawk in 1/48 scale. Stan did the jet in the scheme of VMA-124, a Marine Corps Reserve unit that was based out of Millington at one point, complete with the “Memphis Marines” and “Tennessee Travelers” decals. The white used on the bottom of the jet is Tamiya flat white. He saw the life-size version of this jet while in Canada some years back, he said.

Larry Montgomery, director of activities and frivolities, 
in all his patriotic glory.

Each of the winners received a trophy for their entry. The red, white and blue trophies were 3-D printed by a friend of Larry’s for the contest.

There were eight entries for the contest. Each entrant had three minutes to talk about their model. After the ballots were cast, it was determined that tiebreaker votes were needed to settle the order.

The three models above emerged victorious. 

Larry unofficially won “Best Dressed” for coming to the meeting dressed for the theme. 

Other contest entries included: 

Few decals were used on this 1/72-scale T-38 done in the Thunderbirds
scheme. Glenn masked and painted most of the red and blue lines. 

Glenn Foutch’s 1/72 Hasegawa T-38 done in an Air Force Thunderbirds scheme.

“I built this aircraft because the Thunderbird scheme has always scared the heck out of me,” Glenn said.

Glenn made a #2 decal for the jet to honor Capt. Willie Mays, the Thunderbirds pilot who was flying the #2 jet when he was killed in the 1982 “Diamond Crash.” Mays was from Ripley, Tennessee.

Glenn used Gunze Mr. Color’s insignia white, insignia red and insignia blue to paint the jet. He used the bicentennial markings, national insignia and curved lines on the rear fuselage that came with the kit. All other lines on the jet were masked and painted.

Steve did this 1/48-scale F-14A in the VF-2 “Bounty Hunters” scheme.

Steve Nimtz entered a Tamiya 1/48-scale F-14A Tomcat in the VF-2 “Bounty Hunters” scheme.

“This was a project I’d wanted to do for a while,” Steve said.

He said he wants to do a Tomcat in the VF-1 “Wolfpack” scheme but has had a hard time finding good decals. For this VF-2 model, he used the decals from the kit (calling them the best Tamiya decals he’s ever used) and Gunze Mr. Color paint. Everything was out of the box.

Larry’s F-11F-1 Blue Angel jet was done with Model Master
colors Blue Angel Blue and Blue Angel Yellow. 

Larry entered his 1957 Revell 1/65 scale F-11F-1 done in the Blue Angels scheme. He painted it using Model Master’s Blue Angel Blue and Blue Angel Yellow. He chose to display it with the landing gear up, but that created extra space around the landing gear doors, as it’s meant to be displayed gear down. 

Larry said the model had been a Christmas present for his girlfriend. She’d asked where the rest of them were, since it was supposed to be a diamond, so he built the others as well.

Ron wanted to do something colorful, so for his P-51D he went with
blue accents on the canopy and tail and bright yellow on the nose.  

Ron Campbell brought in his Airfix 1/72-scale model of a P-51D. He said it was something a little newer that he’d finished. For the bare metal, wings were Vallejo Metal Color Duraluminum over Mr. Surfacer Black 1500 (not glossy) he’d used to prime the aircraft. He painted the yellow nose with Testors square bottle enamel, what he called “schoolbus yellow,” and painted the black and white D-Day invasion stripes on the bottom of the aircraft.

“I wanted something colorful or different than what I have,” Ron said.

Abel’s 1/72-scale black F-117A was hiding red and white stripes
and a blue field of stars on its belly, visible with a mirror.

Abel Arce couldn’t make it to the meeting, but sent his 1/72-scale Tamiya F-117A for the contest. Sitting on a patriotic display with a pair of mirrors, the black plane was hiding its color on its belly. The red and white stripes and blue field of stars covering the underside of the aircraft were only visible using the mirrors. Abel said in an email later that the decals came from an Italeri kit that was produced later and he used a combination of Tamiya and Ammo paints.

“It was pretty much an out-of-the-box build,” Abel said.

The club will meet again at 10 a.m. Aug. 29 at Mid-South Hobbies, 4862 Summer Ave., Memphis. The meeting was pushed back a week so that members could attend the IPMS/Huntsville Plastic Modelers Society Model Show on Aug. 22 in Huntsville, Alabama. For more information on the Huntsville show, visit: https://ipmsusa.org/event/49th-annual-hpms-model-show.

PHOTOS: River City Rumble model car show in Memphis

IPMS/Memphis Belle member Glenn Foutch checked out the River City Rumble model car contest and swap meet hosted by the Riff Raff Scale Auto Model Car Club on June 20, 2026, at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Memphis. 

Below are some of the photos he took. Some of the shots include the entry form with more information about the build. Click on the photos to make them larger. 

Postcards: Chris’s Adventures in Wonderland

By Chris Vandegrift

I’m on vacation in Edinburgh (pronounce that with uh sound at the end), Scotland, this week, and the family already lost me Day 1 to a hobby shop 435 feet from the hotel ​​​… Google is apparently rejecting the metric system, so in local speak that’s only 132 meters. I’m at Wonderland!

Wonderland was established more than 50 years ago and is Scotland’s largest model specialist.

It was truly a happy surprise! I had no idea till the girls were looking for a boba tea place and I saw this across the street!

Lots of Airfix as you might guess, it’s a full wall for sure. It’s a huge shop with R/C, LEGO, Warhammer and such. They’re not afraid to stock the big stuff either – multiple kits in each of 1/16 armour, 1/200 ships and 1/24 aircraft.

The storefront doesn’t make it look as big as it is. The store goes deep back into the block and spreads out a little bit in the back in a T-shape.

I found everything in here from plastic-bagged kits to vacuum-form models, but oddly, none of those all-photoetch kits. My fav though, was the Italeri custom show trucks that are on the European circuit. We can never get those in the States.

Prices include tax, also known as VAT here. And don’t bring Euros, they only take pounds in the UK, or the Scot version of the pound note, though you can’t use that outside of Scotland.

I really found it hard not to come home with a kit to add to my stash. Go figure!

So, I went back up to the Wonderland shop to look at those show trucks. I decided the determining factor would be, “if it fits in my backpack, I’m gonna go ahead and buy one.” Guess what? Of course, I found one that fit, and I bought the Abarth you see in the picture!

For those who may end up traveling, there’s no tariff, tax or duty due upon reentry to the U.S. Just book a $1,300 ticket and get your shipping for free! 

Postcards: Good fortune finding kits in MENG country

Dear fellow glue sniffers, 

You must have seen, owned, built or at least heard about MENG kits made in Taiwan. They are high-quality kits. Especially the 32nd-scale Fokker Dr.I Triplane that they licensed from Wingnut Wings.

Map of Ximen in downtown Taipei. Do you find the hobby store?

My good fortune and scientific collaborations with a Taiwanese professor from the late ‘90s landed me an appointment with National Taiwan University (a.k.a. NTU) some 10 years ago to visit Taipei annually, teaching a graduate-level research course. NTU is the Harvard of Taiwan with brilliant and highly motivated students. 

The course always ran from 4-7 p.m., hence I had the rest of the day to trace MENG kits in Taipei hobby shops.

In MENG country, I thought it would be an easy goal to accomplish. As it turned out, I was dead wrong.

The first year I went to Taipei, my host and friend, who is also a fellow armor modeler, gave the order to the students to take me downtown to Ximen in Wanhua district to his favorite hobby shop. I rushed the class a bit in hopes that we would then go to THE HOBBY SHOP. 

And so we went, by metro and then on foot for 10 minutes in a fancy shopping district, into a department store-like building, up and up on the escalator, to arrive at a hobby shop in the corner of the floor. The place was overwhelmingly loaded with kits. 

The green building.

I asked for MENG kits and was directed to a shelf in the fourth row in the back, where I found a Convair F-102 “Delta Dagger” piloted by President George W. Bush and a Kayaba Ku-4 “Katsuodori” Ram-Jet, both 1/72nd scale. Because there were literally many, many hundreds of kits, I decided that I would visit this shop again.

The next visit came several years later, last October, when I took the metro to Ximen station. And then the adventure began. 

Look at the map in the picture. I hope you can read Chinese characters — traditional Chinese, not Mandarin, which is used in the PR China but not in Taiwan. I cannot. So, where is the hobby shop?

I combed the streets and finally remembered that the building was green. I found a green building. I went to the entrance to take the escalator, but the building was closed. 

Daa – it was Sunday at 11 a.m. The building opens from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. I asked myself, “Is this the right building?”

It was my lucky break because on the list of shops at the door, there was ONLY ONE in Roman characters that read “U2” and something in Taiwanese. 

The Apollo 11 Saturn V kit in 72nd scale from Dragon  

This must be it! Nobody in the right frame of mind would name a shop U2 unless he knows that it is the name of the famous Lockheed spy plane. 

I went back the next day just to realize that the U2 shop on the 9th floor was a music store. 

Disappointed, I took the escalator down and on the 4th floor, I saw a Gundam ad. I walked around the 4th floor, and Bingo! In the corner, there was the model store. 

This time, I was shopping for old spacecraft kits, wanting to get the Apollo 11 Saturn V kit in 72nd scale and the LLM in 24th scale. After half an hour searching through the shelves, I found both of them and more. 

The problem then became how to fit them into my suitcase. You probably know that I wasn’t going to leave them behind.

This April, my wife and I went back to Taipei to give my last course under the contract that ended on May 31, 2026. 

My wife is into birds like I am, but not the kind of birds that I like, called airplanes. I have tried to convert her once before. I found a kit with a dozen HO scale pigeons, but she has not finished painting their fancy camouflage yet. We have only been together for 46 years, so she still has time to learn how to weather a pigeon.

Now, back to the store in April. The store had even more kits since the last time I was there last October. 

The kits fill the store shelves from floor to ceiling.    

You have to be a slim person to fit between the shelves that are covered with kits from the floor to the ceiling — look at the pictures. 

With her waiting for me outside the store, I quickly realized that I would not have the usual hour to browse through the shelves for rare kits. 

It was hopeless because the kits are in random order. I tried, but after 10 minutes glancing at my wife’s impatient face waiting for me outside, I had to come up with a quick fix.

The store owner, an elderly gentleman (80+), spoke as much in Hungarian as in English, both equal ZERO. But when I wrote on a piece of paper that I wanted the 1/72 Revell kit of the space shuttle with the Hubble telescope and the Chinese Tiagong 2 spacecraft kit, he smiled and waved to his granddaughter.

She disappeared between the kit-loaded shelves, and not a minute later, she brought the two kits and handed them to me. 

Typical Taiwanese efficiency!

I paid and was out of the store in record time with my marriage saved.  

Your Sprue Brother,

Gabor