Hi all!

Sorry about the last minute notice on this, but we only discovered that this existed today.  There is apparently a group called the Ontario Military Vehicles Association which is doing a show this weekend at the Odessa fairground (which would be about 3 hours east of Toronto).  They are apparently bringing tanks, and from what we've heard, this is an annual thing.

The websites are:

https://www.facebook.com/OMVAFrontenac/

https://www.omva.ca/

My wife and I are planning to take the family to the fairground on Saturday, and scout it out for possible RC tank activity if anybody wants us to.  That said, does anybody want to join us there in checking it out?

(As I said, this is REALLY last minute, and I apologize - the first we heard about this, we thought it was somebody bringing a tank to run over cars at the Odessa Fair two weeks from now...my wife only discovered it was something different today.)

Further to this, if nobody from either club can join us but the grounds look good for bringing RC tanks into the mix, would anybody like me to try to make contact with the organizers of the event on behalf of the clubs?

I am already in touch with the Vice president. This is a big battle weekend for us so not sure if anyone else will make it.

dgsselkirk wrote:

I am already in touch with the Vice president. This is a big battle weekend for us so not sure if anyone else will make it.

Right then...we'll just go and enjoy ourselves today...

Hope you and the family had a great day. The weather was absolutely wonderful on the KW Tank field today.

Jarlath wrote:

Hope you and the family had a great day. The weather was absolutely wonderful on the KW Tank field today.

It was good in Odessa too - hot, but not too humid (although the humidity did arrive by the evening).

So...if I had to describe it, I think I might do it as the scaled-down version of Aquino.  There were around 12-18 military vehicles at a VERY rough estimate, most of which were APCs of one sort or another (many of which were left open so that people could go in and sit down).  There were two tanks, a Sherman and a smaller tank I couldn't identify.  A few German re-enactors had shown up, and, I'm told, were doing battle re-enactments with the Sherman (we apparently arrived right after they had parked the Sherman after one, and we had to leave a little bit before they were planning to start the next).  There were also free APC rides, one of which we got grandfathered into when it turned out that they had to switch vehicles...to the one we were sitting in at the time.

(The Sherman was actually brought by the Ontario Regiment Museum, and a conversation with one of the people running it revealed a very interesting piece of news.  Apparently, there is a very wealthy private collector, whose name escapes me at the moment, who is not only likely to be providing the parts to Bovington to extend Tiger 131's running life, but is also on track to have TWO Tiger 1s and a King Tiger in running condition by the end of the year.  Sadly, this fellow does not have a museum, so God only knows if anybody other than him will get to enjoy these tanks.)

As far as future potential involvement goes, I found at least two good candidate spots for RC tanks.  Most the grass was short (and brown, sad to say), but there was a covered area where the vendors were located, and in its shadow the grass was longer and greener.

I do have pictures on my phone, I just haven't gotten around to uploading them to my laptop yet.