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| Martin Gregorie, Chris Edge, Mike Fantham | Julian Pennington |
photos © Julian Pennington 2003 unless otherwise noted, text © Martin Gregorie 2003
This is the history of the pilgrimage made by Chris Edge, Mike Fantham, Julian Pennington and myself to the MaxMen 2003 contest at Lost Hills, California in February, 2003.
I needed to go to Lost Hills anyway, in order to collect an electronic M&K short F1A that I'd ordered before Christmas. I mentioned this to Chris, and pretty soon he, Jules and myself were getting organised. We realised we still had room in the van and Chris convinced Mike to join the gang.
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| Martin Gregorie, Chris Edge, Mike Fantham | Julian Pennington |
We flew out on British Airways from Heathrow the Tuesday before the MaxMen. We did see a lot of police and soldiery at the airport, but thought this was security for units of the British Army heading for the Gulf. It wasn't until we got back that we heard about the "SAMs under Heathrow approach" scare... The trip out was uneventful. BA did a good job of getting our models hand-loaded onto the plane and, although some of our boxes came down the carousel at LAX, all our models arrived without damage. We collected our Chrysler Venture from Hertz and drove to Lost Hills in time for dinner with Stafford Screen and Pete Watson. We did see a lot of snow on the Grapevine - alongside the road in places, but thought little of it because Lost Hills was dry.