On 24 December, I visited Carpet Monster Hobby Store. No longer just a web-only vendor, Carpet Monster has a brick and mortar presence in downtown Berryville in the town’s incubator site. The location is sponsored by the Berryville Main Street organization to allow new businesses to develop a base and to grow with the goal of launching the business to flourish on or slightly off Main Street in Berryville. A win win for the town and the young business. Donovan Jonkers, a member of Shenandoah Valley Modelers, runs the business. He stocks Gundam and military models (armor and aircraft) along with various paints and tools. He is looking to have modelers display their build(s) in his glass enclosed shelves to motivate buyers. Come bring your model to show! As the business matures, Donovan hopes to have build nights at the store. During the week, the store will be open 4-8pm and on weekends the store will be open longer. Stop by and say hi. The location is 23 East Main Street, Berryville, 2nd floor.

Happy Christmas Eve Ravenhood! Here is a Andrea Miniatures metal figure vignette kit in 54mm that is very much in the spirit of the season. A very tired Santa needs a quick nap but his trusty elves carry on the work to get the toys ready! Santa was an “easy” paint job but those elves were super tiny (even smaller than Marcin’s figures) and they were a bit harder on my old eyes but in the end, it was a neat little vignette about what we look forward to all year – Christmas. Ho Ho Ho fellow Ravens

The December Christmas pot luck and white elephant gift exchange was loads of fun. As usual, everyone’s 1:1 scale food contribution was superb. That apple crisp dessert was amazing! The white elephant gift items this year were equally fantastic. Everyone who participate really brought “I want that” gifts so thanks to all for doing that. We do this each year as a chapter event, so plan now for December 2026! We also had a helicopter build theme for the meeting, with about 7 entries. They were all stunning. Donovan’s UH-1Y Venom took the cake prize by one vote, with Pat’s excellent Firescout UAV helo coming in a well earned second place. For a while, the two were tied! January’s theme is motorbikes and March’s theme is babes and animals – so get to your workbenches!

Ravencon 2026 is on! Our club will hold its first IPMS level contest on 07 November 2026. The location will be the Eukarya Christian Academy at 901 Aylor Road in Stephens City. We will work to have vendors and a food truck from a famous Shenandoah Valley restaurant at the show We will have 12 categories, and several theme awards. The theme of the show, in line with this being our first show, is Prototypes. That A-10A with the long sensor probe on the nose. Those pretty F/A-18A pre production birds, and many other such “first ones” of any mass produced item. The Ravenhood looks forward to hosting its first show and showing the valley who we are!

What a solid meeting. We had a great discussion on Ravencon 2026. Thanks to all for the many superb contributions to the discussion. More on Ravencon will be relayed via Discord. The models on display were quite numerous. Andre’s small scale truck was a knockout and Marcin’s well done and humorous cowboy was top notch. I loved the terra cotta pot used a as a base for it. The highlight of the meeting was a in-depth fiber optic and LED lighting tutorial by Todd. He is excellent at teaching this topic and I think everyone in the room was left with a desire to see that huge star cruiser being finished. I know I certainly am. Thanks again to those who signed up to bring this or that at the next month pot luck meeting, which is our annual Christmas pot luck and first ever club helicopter build. The big question will be whomever wins the cake, will he share pieces with the club! Jeff, Scott, and myself are going to Bunkermania as entrants. If anyone who can’t go but would like to enter, let one of us know soonest and we can enter your build on your behalf.

What a meeting! We were jam packed and everyone was in a great mood. Congrats to Gabe and Pat for their first ever awards at the recent shows. The models on the table were excellent – I especially like the Me 109 and the SAS jeep but they were all superb. It was good to to see the display table totally filled up with great builds! The theme of the show was the airbrush technique show, run by Dave. This was Dave’s second visit to the Ravenhood and he put on quite a tutorial and had a number of members hovered over him as he was showing different techniques and skills. Remember that for November, Todd is demonstrating fiber optics part 2 and for December we will have our annual pot luck meeting along with “Best Helicopter” theme meeting. Bring your best helicopter! So we do not have nothing but desserts, please let me know what you plan to bring; we need about 4-5 meal dishes, 3-4 dessert dishes, juices/water, cups/plates, napkins. The food in the past has been yummy good so keep up the great dish-builds for 2025! I am already hungry. To reiterate Scott’s speech at the meeting, jump into the arena and come to a show. Even if you come to “shop and watch” it will be a good time and you get to see the talent from across the region. It looks great when there are a bunch of us in club shirts there as well – we look sharp!

I stopped by Dan’s All Nation Hobby Shop in Stephens City on 01 October 2026 Dan, as usual, was working on some pieces when I walked in. I asked him to do some casting for me, which he readily jumped on. I asked him if I could feature his store in a web site posting, which he also readily accepted. Dan bought the inventory of a hobby store that he visited when he was a long haul truck driver between Chicago and Indianapolis. He took that inventory and headed south and landed, luckily for us, in Stephens City. From the start, Dan did not want to compete with other hobby stores by offering RC fare; rather he wanted to build a family friendly business and as each of us who visit Dan’s store can attest, he certainly has accomplished that. Dan has been a staunch support of the Raven-hood and our early days started out in the airplane room of his store. We met there for about a year and owe our “infancy” to Dan’s generosity. If some of you do not know, the board made Dan an Honorary Member of the Shenandoah Valley Modelers for life as a means to honor his team spirit and how he helps us out but can never make meetings due to running his business. Stop by and say hi to Dan when you can – and of course shop!

Good day Gents. Please welcome our two new club members “Great Scott” Scott Perlick and Ronald Polimeni. Scott is returning to the hobby and Ronald is a current modeler and Volvo Club member . It is always great to have new members in the club and we look forward to seeing their builds! I brought a cake to celebrate our Nationals winners and out of all the winners, only Mark was on hand to cut the cake. Congrats again to Gabe, John, Mark, Marcin and Scott (that would be “Teacher Scott). The club sales went pretty well, with enough raised to purchase two more “Best of” awards for Ravencon – bring the current total of paid-for awards to 5. That is half of the awards so we are looking real good at this point in the planning process for Ravencon 2026. Frontline has committed to an award and that will be 6, so even better. As a reminder to all, the next series of meeting themes are:

October- the return of Tom Lacy’s airbrush guru and continued kit sales November – no theme as of yet and happy to take your ideas on that December – helicopter build month and the annual Christmas pot luck meal (yum yum) January – motorcycle build month

If anyone knows of a neat person to invite to be a speaker at a meeting, like a “famous” modeler, a war veteran, a hobby industry spokesman, a museum curator, a race driver, etc etc, let me know to slot that person into a meeting cycle. That would be a interesting meeting.

Good day Gents. On 13 September 2025, the Central PA IPMS club hosted its annual PennCon event, which was held for the second time at Messiah College. Attending as competitors were Todd Fit, Pat Fontana, Scott Saylor, Jeff and Belle Muir, Ross Pagan, and myself. Also there was Mark Tutton as a vendor, Tom Lacy and Tom Stephens. The show was well attended and the Central PA club member were their typical friendly selves. I am very proud to say that each Raven who competed placed! How great was that?! I acted as a mini-vendor myself and sold nearly $800 worth of kits. How great was that?! We were able to recover all the funds used to get the bronze/silver/gold awards for Ravencon 2026 – which was a goal I was elated to achieve. I handed out flyers for Ravencon and I was invited by ModelGeeks to do a podcast at the show about our club and Ravencon. C’mon, how great was that?! Okay, okay, I know you want the medal count so here goes Scott lead the way with 2 golds, 3 silvers and 2 bronzes (show off!) Then there was Belle Muir with 2 silvers and 1 bronze; Ross nabbed 2 silvers; Jeff earned 1 silver and 2 bronzes and our resident Star Wars expert Todd nailed a silver with his “burnt bread” spacecraft. I was able to squeak out 2 silvers and 1 bronze. The feathers in the Ravenhood are getting longer and longer!

On 06 September 2025, several members of our club attended the National Capitol Model Soldier Society’s annual show at the Hilton Hotel in Springfield Virginia. Attending on behalf of the Shenandoah Valley Modelers was Randy Corish, Scott Saylor, Jeff Muir, Belle Muir and myself as contestants. Bruce Oppenhagen attended the show to look and to shop! You go Bruce! Per the NCMSS staff, this was their largest show in their 64 years of putting on the show, with nearly 70 contestants entering over 300 models. As this is a figures-based show, some of the figures entered were beyond amazing and well beyond anything I know I can do but it was a pleasure to see such talent pooled together. I am happy to report every SVM member who competed won. Jeff won a bronze and a silver, Randy won a bronze, Belle scored a bronze and Scott scored a silver, a gold and a “Best of” in the vehicles category – way to go Scott. I was able to squeak out a silver, 3 bronzes, and a “Best of” in the maritime category. The show was well run and they did the awards really efficiently – which was appreciated after such a long day. We were all tired at the end, but walked away with another impressive showing for the Ravenhood.