Annual Report for MAFVA from John Paulding
MAFVA Nationals Competition
A call for judges for the 2025 competition has gone out.Just waiting for responses, but I’m hopeful that the usual judges will come forward for this year.
We will also need some stewards to help entrants to find the right category and the manage the log-in process. Crispin Block has handled this task for several years now and he has agreed do so again. I will post a request on the website for more volunteers shortly.
The practice of awarding medals as prizes now seems to have been accepted, so it is proposed we continue this practice. We will need to order more medals for this year. There are now no kits left in the MAFVA repository so we need to decide if we obtain at least one for the Best of Show winner.
Since we no longer have first, second and thrid classes and all categories are judged in the same way I have simplified things this year by reducing the classes to thirteen. The new list of classes is now on the website Nationals page.
Two problems that arose last year were that one entry that most of us expected to win a gold was unplaced by the judges and there was the usual race against time to complete the judging in time for the certificates to be printed and awarded. The first problem I intend to address by holding a second judging meeting prior to the judging of the Best of Show award in which we all check to see if we agree with the other judges decisions. Since extra time will be required to do this the time for the second round of judging will be brought forward. This should also help avoid the second problem and allow Bob more time to do his job.
MAFVA Nationals Show – 2025
The Cambridge MAFVA National Show Team remains the same for 2025.
Tom Cole: Treasurer and General and Trade Admin. Officer
Mark Gilbert: Branch and Affiliate Exhibitors
JP: Competition and Publicity
Simon Ward: Bring and Buy, PA System
MAFVA Publicity
We have stocks of the 2025 Nationals leaflet and the MAFVA Nationals A5 leaflets. Any branches wishing to distribute this leaflet can have it in digital form or can request a quantity of printed leaflets. We can arrange a reprint should it be required.
We have a handful of MAFVA Banners for use at shows. South Wales MAFVA have handed their MAFVA banner back as they plan to rename themselves as South Wales Modelers, so we have one in reserve.
We also have artworks for standard MAFVA page advertisement and half page advertisement should we wish to advertise in printed media. I can also produce an animated screen ad should we wish to promote MAFVA on anyone elses’ websites. This would be produced to order with the specification depended on the requirements of the outside websites.
MAFVA Website and Digital Involvement
I am pleased to say that there has been no problems with the website in 2024. We have two website addresses: mafva.org and mafva.co.uk which both point to the MAFVA website. Visitor numbers have remained steady at approximatedly 2000 visits per month. The website has now been hosted by Siteground for over two year without any major problems, although the annual fee increased dramatically once the introductory offer expired. Although expensive, I consider the amount we are now paying to be good value for money when compared to the rates and performance offered by other hosting companies.
I would remind officers that we do have a program to enable us to ‘mail shot’ the entire membership. This could be used to advise all members that a new digital edition of Tankette was available. However someone would have to take on the task of keeping the mailing list up to date.
Finding enough content to keep the website fresh is still an on-going problem.
Thanks to President Paul’s continued input with new products pages and updating various pages on the website we do have something that changes regularly, but more would always be desirable.
As a reminder; we have the ability to post movies and video presentations should anyone wish to participate in providing the content. I would be pleased to assist with the technical side of the production. I’m particulately keen to have ‘out-of-the-box kit reviews, ‘how-to articles’, show visits and anything else that would be of interest to the membership. All contributions welcome!
Paul Gandy has been kind enough to provide me with an index of articles that have been published in his Dragon magazine and is prepared to let us republish them on our website.(subject to the agreement of individual article writers).
Whilst on the subject of content it’s worth noting that after the home page the most visited page on the website is once again Mike Stamer’s page on British AFV Camouflage, 1939-45, and has been consistently since it was posted in 2019! Do we need more technical pages like this? Any offers?
JP. 4th Feb. 2025