Well the three day AMA Show ordeal is over. Ordeal? Maybe I should say 'or deals', or maybe not.

First off I would like to thank fellow board members (Gary, Mark, CJ, Brent) and club members (Ron Hurwit, Dusty Shearer, Brett Scott, John Kupinski, Mike Dimick) who came and helped at our booth. A special thank you goes to Brent's guests Stephanie and Emma (Emma helped with tickets and drew the raffle winners!). And of course a thank you to our club members who purchased raffle tickets that helped raise money for our club. If you didn't know it already every dollar help$, but honestly more dollar$ help even more! Your raffle donations count so keep them coming and support our club.

However a special thank you goes to several show sponsors one of which is Hobby Town USA in Corona who helped us with our ParkZone PNP purchases. Thank you Jamie! We are also grateful to MyRCDesigns, Micro Fasteners, and Golden Skies who donated prizes to us at the show. Without our sponsors our hope of success diminishes at the AMA show raffle!

What's it like working the show? Well it isn't easy when it is busy. And this year we were not that busy. But when you are behind the booth you are actually working to get people to buy raffle tickets, getting new members, or answering questions. At the end of the show we all had aches and pains from those uncomfortable plastic convention chairs, laryngitis from all of the talking, and sore eyes from those glaring hanging lights.

Attendance was an issue again this year. I don't have any AMA announced statistics but I think we saw either the same or fewer amount of people attend the show this year compared to last year. I am not sure about people spending money but our raffle ticket sales suffered and didn't come close to our sales of 3-4 shows ago or even last year. Friday started slowly. Generally speaking Friday is the second best day as far as attendance and ticket sales but the latter didn't happen. We struggled the first day on the ticket line and it turned out being our worst ticket sales day. Saturday is the heavy day when it comes to attendance and ticket sales. It was definitely our best ticket sales day but overall we could have done better. We tried like side-show carnies but the competition to capture 'loose change' was overwhelming. Sunday started with almost nobody in the parking lot or waiting line. However it turned out to be our second best ticket sales day despite the low show attendance. We logged all ticket sales and had only 87 line entries. The most common ticket purchase was $5 and we passed out 1001 tickets in all. Not the best by any standard. There were three empty booths in our half-aisle location and while other aisles seemed busy at times our location looked half dead most of the time. It might be time to consider something better. As they say in the real estate game, 'Location, Location, Location'.

Friday night I attended the AMA Exhibitor's After Show Raffle and Appetizer Feast. You had to get there early for a chair and munchies because they went fast. People devoured the after-show free appetizers passing on the $4 Convention Floor Hot Dog special that seemed to disappear after one bite. Between the cost of parking and food going to the AMA Show is an expensive proposition. I am not sure if anyone from the club attending the Exhibitors After-Show event before but I left after the raffle drawing which lasted 20 minutes. They gave away a free booth for 2013, some restaurant gift certificates, and AMA clothing. Our club raffle tickets were not drawn for any prizes.

One good thing about the AMA show is that it provided the new board with the opportunity to introduce themselves to the vendors and make or renew important contacts. Several of the board members made those contacts and hopefully we will see the benefits at future raffles. We plan to keep the communication lines open and active! Hopefully we will see bigger, better and more raffle prizes next year.

The only thing that caught my eye was a new airplane from Aeroworks which had a set of prototype floats on it. I immediately thought of our annual Float Fly event and was able to speak to Rocco along with Stan Wagner (our official Float Fly Grand Raffle Winner Guru). Check out their Aeroworks' website for the new Cessna CL-126 AFT QB.

Yeah but the big news is who won the raffle prizes. So there is the list:

• Ticket #547689 - Blue Ticket, Tony Hoag, ParkZone P-47 PNP
• Ticket #579453 - White Ticket, Brian Hester, ParkZone Spitfire PNP - (Club Member)
• Ticket #547666 - Blue Ticket, Dean Heckert, ParkZone Stryker PNP
• Ticket #547502 - Blue Ticket, Jose Martin, MyRCDesigners – Revenge Foamie
• Ticket #546842 - Blue Ticket, Cherri Etienne, Micro Fasteners – Asstd Screw Pack
• Ticket #546958 - Blue Ticket , Don Clement, Golden Skies - Fuel Dot

Well that's it. I deserve some R&R time. See you at the field.