The Wine Country Model Club held a very fun meeting on Monday December 1, 2025 at the Rohnert Park Round Table with 20 members and guests attending.
President James Morando first reported that many positive responses had been received to the initial social media posts announcing the April 11, 2026 Wine Country Model Expo. Members then discussed Expo planning and several additional club members stepped up to volunteer for specific tasks – thank you Dean Wallace, Ben Harper and Mike Vice! And a special thanks to Brett Halby for announcing that he will sponsor the Best Sci-Fi award.
Plans were discussed for the annual Holiday gift exchange event which will be held on Saturday January 10, 2026 which will feature our always popular Elephant gift exchange including steals.
Club members then considered and voted on both the theme for the next club group build and members voted overwhelmingly for the theme of the “Shelf of Doom”/“Shelf of Opportunity” for the next group build.
We then discussed and voted on the club’s next field trip outing and the top vote getter was a visit to the new exhibit at the local Museum of Sonoma called Take Me to the Water: Histories of the Black Pacific.
Members then listened to a short presentation about the benefits that ChatGBT and Open AI can provide to scale modelling.
The Show and Tell session was terrific as members presented some wonderful work including a beautiful wood carving of the club’s new logo being done by Kathy Brown. This month’s discussion topic led to some helpful introspective discussion about the club as each member shared what they liked about the club’s direction and what they would like to see in the future.
Dean then organized the People’s Choice voting for our “Vintage” kits group build. Third place was a tie between Hal Sanford’s Fokker D.VI and Ted Riehl’s Triceratops. Second place went to Dean Wallace for his Fiat 131 and the top vote getting winner was Ben Mossing’s Honda Civic. Congrats all!
Our next meeting is scheduled for Monday January 5, 2026.
