Baghdad Hobby Club |
Gallery Article by Charles P. Kalina
on
Jan 3 2004
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The
Baghdad Hobby Club is located in the Victory
Palace
on Camp
Slayer,
just south of Baghdad International
Airport.
It was founded during the summer of 2003 and provides morale support and
recreation for deployed personnel.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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Modeller's workbench
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In-progress photo
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Donated Kit Stash
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Display
Shelf of finished models
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The
club receives no support from the
U.S.
government, except for
its meeting space and a work table. Members
pay modest one-time dues and usually make a small contribution when they take
from the club’s kit stash. Donations
by
Hobby Town
USA
and the
Salt Lake City
/ Southern Front IPMS
chapter helped get the club started, and it has received plenty of other
contributions – many of which are older products that retailers have been
unable to liquidate, but which are nonetheless welcome.
Besides
plastic models, there are members who play role-playing games or paint fantasy
miniatures, and some are working on an HO-scale model railroad.
There are some radio-control vehicles, a slot car track and an O-scale
train loop, plus some donated N-scale trains that nobody’s done much with as
yet. We’ve also passed along some
donations to a nearby Civil Affairs unit, which is reconstituting a youth center
destroyed by looting after the war.
Paints
and tools remain in short supply, we pool our
resources for periodic mail-orders. We
can’t get spray paints due to shipping restrictions, but we do have airbrushes
and compressors, with a separate room for airbrushing.
We
may be working under primitive circumstances, but you have to admit that from
the outside at least, we’ve got a pretty impressive-looking clubhouse.
Next time you’re in
Baghdad
, please feel free to
drop by!
-CPK
Note
from Steve Bamford
I
feel this is a very good group of guys and deserve any support you can
offer...no matter how small. I've known Charles
P. Kalina
for a long while and his group is worthy of support. E-mail him if you
have model kits, accessories, tools, paints or cash you can send to help keep
these and future members of this club busy while they are overseas. Two
members of this club are ARC regulars and it was an ARC regular that formed this
club.
Steve
Bamford ARC webmaster Jan 3 2004
Click on
images below to see larger images
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Display
Shelf of finished models
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Airbrushing
Room
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HO-Scale
model Railroad under Construction
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