This year’s annual Airfix Competition is back at the Air Force Museum after a 4 years’ break due to Covid-19. This year’s event was from Thursday 2nd to Saturday 4th November 2023.

Once again we were at the Officers Mess at the Singapore Air Force Museum which was where we were for many years.

We set up on Thursday morning from 0900hrs, and were ready to accept entries at 1300hrs. The first entries were from Lester Poh with his Airfix 35th Ferret and 35th WWII British Truck dioramas.

Lee Stringer set up a table with his Studio Scale models, and another table of Messerschmitts Me 262 aircraft and other late WWII or 1946 (what if) German aircraft. Mick Stephen brought his Airfix 35th Ferret and Airfix 48th BAe Hawk (Indonesian markings).

In the 2 days, we accepted a total of 31 entries. The youngest entry was from Ramon Jeyarajah who is 10 years of age (with his WWII British airfield) and the most senior entry came from Nr Teo Yew Chiat who is 89 years of age, and who served in MAAF (Malaysian Auxiliary Air Force - still part of RAF) in 1952 - 1965. And his entry was both the Airfix 48th Chipmunk and Harvard who are aircraft that he worked on.

During the days of Thursday and Friday, we had quite a number of visitors coming in to view the entries, included a few groups of kindergarten children and parents.

The judging was done on Friday night after 6pm. As usual, we had the most Masterclass entries. It took the judges Jonathan Kua, Lee Stringer, Mick Stephen and Suresh Nathan long debates to judge and award the prizes.

On Saturday, the crowd started coming in around 1100hrs. It grew substantially just before 1330hrs to listen to Goh Yong Kiat’s speech on Singapore aerospace scene which started with the creation of Seletar Airport (RAF Singapore) in 1924, followed by Kallang Airport for commercial flights.

At 1430hrs, we did my speech about the Airfix hobby and its practical application in real life, the skills one acquires and problem solving approach. I touched upon the importance of doing our National Service seriously and not be complacent in our defence.

We also presented a Airfix Quickbuilt F35 model to Jimmy Yu, the Paya Lebar Airbase chief. This was a project made by all involved and present for the running of the National Airfix Aeronautical Model Engineering Competition 2023.

Then we presented the prizes to the winners and took the group photos.