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Our first meeting of 2024 was held rather early in the year, but for a good reason: Peter Gottschalk was here from the East Coast. We scheduled this meeting around his vacation time in sunny California.

Just in time for the meeting, I finished my newest paper model: USS ENGLAND, designed by Darius Lapinski, Paper Lab, and printed and distributed in Germany by HMV. This is by far the most detailed paper model that I have ever worked on. Luckily, Darius was kind enough to supply me with some 3D printed parts, like the pipes around the funnel and the gun barrels. I still have to do the rigging for this model.

For our meeting we had 16 participants-I guess being so close after the holidays did not deter our collector group. One of our regular members, Les Kawamoto, was not able to attend since he was just released from the hospital. We all want to wish Les a speedy recovery.

As you will be able to see on my photos, there was a large table full of models for sale. In addition, I have decided to sell most of my collection. Eric Goggins brought some of his newest 3D prints. He is getting more into war ships, but passenger liners are still his main production.

For the official part of our meeting, we were able to utilize our living room and the adjacent dining room. I had asked my wife to keep our Christmas decorations on display. They are proof that I am not the only collector in this family.

Peter Gottschalk is chairing a twice monthly Zoom meeting for 1250 collectors. We have a lot of interesting discussions with some of our US, British and German friends. Some of our members here were not aware of this Zoom Group, but some of them will probably chime in in the future.

Some of our members are relatively new to our meetings. They have heard our enthusiastic stories about our National Meetings in the past--we had a lot of great weekends together on both coasts and also in Chicago. These "newbies" are still expressing interest in organizing a larger meeting. Perhaps not in the style of our previous SMSC meetings. If you have any suggestions, please post them here for all of our considerations.
I mentioned that the next Kassel meeting will be in Kassel, Germany, on June 7/8. This is always the ultimate 1250 get together. Yes, Germany is a long plane ride from the US. But the hotels in Kassel are reasonably priced, and they usually include a very good breakfast. You can get to Kassel by train directly from the Frankfurt airport. If any one is interested in help for their planing of a Kassel trip, and where else to go in Germany, please contact me. I cannot help with planning your airplane tickets, but I might be able to help with a lot of other questions.

Eric Goggans told us that the third carrier after USS MIDWAY and USS CORAL SEA, the USS FRANKLIN D ROOSEVELT, will probably be available by Mid May, in time for Kassel.

For us serious collectors, Eric is printing the 3D models on his most detailed printers. However, Eric also has printers that can produce less costly models. Some of these models might be of interest to the USS MIDWAY Museum store. If any of you have any contact information to the MIDWAY, please let Eric know.

In San Carlos, right here in the Bay Area, there is a large collection of scratch built 1/200 scale model ships. The builder has passed, and his daughter is interested in help on how to dispose of these large ships. In our discussion on Saturday, we agreed that most, if not all museums will not be interested in such a collection. Probably an auction house might be the best solution. However, before these models disappear, a 8-10 member group of our collectors will be trying to organize a field trip.

We agreed that our next meeting will be on May 4, 2024, at Tom's house.

Here is my photo album from last Saturday. I am hoping for some more photos from Peter Gottschalk:
https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0m5X3iPcYwlG2