Every time we have visited a continental European show we’ve been told how good the show at Mošonmagyarovar in Hungary is, but the distance has put us off… until now. We finally made the trip and it proved to be well worth it. We went by Ryanair from London Stansted. If you’ve travelled by Ryanair you’ll immediately know that it wasn’t practical to take any models ourselves for the competition. Ryanair is a ‘no frills’ airline, and by frills we mean: legroom, overhead locker space, empty seats and bags any bigger than a wallet. We just went to ‘walk the floor’ and find out why continental modellers rave about Mošon, as it’s more usually called. Now we know!
View of the competition area early on Saturday morning. The empty tables in the middle are for the teams of judges to examine each models in great detail.
The venue is a modern sports arena which appears to be a netball stadium. There are nets on the wall, an electronic scoreboard and pictures of the girls of the home team on the gallery wall. The model competition area is in the main playing area, the trade stands are all around the balcony and there is stadium seating all along one side of the main hall, which was most welcome, as there is a lot of walking, or shuffling to be more precise. There was a massive attendance and space to really take in the quality of the exhibits was at a premium. That’s probably because entry is free. Yes, you read that correctly. There is no charge for entry!
The show caters for models of all kinds and there is one heck of a lot of them. The show opens at 08.00 am and more models were arriving all the time throughout the Saturday morning with the exhibits being moved closer and closer together to make room for each newcomer.
As you would expect from a general models show, aircraft made up the largest proportion of the entries, but armour and military vehicles wasn’t far behind, taking up two huge arrangements of tables. The quality of the entries was absolutely outstanding. We are used to seeing a high standard of modelling at western European shows, but the standard here took things to a new level. That and the sheer number of entries made it evident why our continental friends rate this show so highly.
I took over 500 photos in total. Obviously we don’t have room for them all here, so here’s just a small selection. By the end of the first day we were told that over 3000 models had been entered in the competition. Oh by the way the show goes on until 19.00 in the evening, presumably to give the public time to see as much as possible and give the judges time to carry out their mammoth task! Judging follows a similar system to AMPS in the USA with teams of five judges examining each model in detail. I can’t even imaging how they choose a best of class. There wasn’t a poor model within that 3000!
Here’s just some of the armour/military entries….
…and here’s just a taste of what else there was on show…..
To finalise; yes, it was certainly worth a visit. For UK MAFVA members the journey is a barrier to taking models for the competition, but just to visit it’s well worthwhile. Mošon is located just inside western Hungary and a long way from Budapest. The nearest airports are Vienna and Bratislava in Slovakia. We chose Vienna as there is a direct rail ink to Mošon. Would we visit regularly? Probably not, just due to the length of journey, but we would recommend that every MAFVA members does it once to see a standard of modelling that we are unaccustomed to and learn and improve from it.