No, not really. It was a 5 day long costumed party! A great time was had by all and it looks like we will be making it an annual pilgrimage!

Full report and pics to follow!

Looking through his site, you can see that he has quite the resume.

So if your looking for the ultimate in colonial marine armour, the best you can do is go to the original maker.

The advantages of a set of Terry English colonial marine armour speak for themselves really. First up, it is a collectors item, a replica of the original colonial marine armour made by the man who made them for the movie. Second plus point, The armour is made from quite thick aluminium, so its robust and can take alot of punishment, its also cooler than other armour as it absorbs less heat and because it is aluminium, its lighter than other metals and thick fiberglass. Finally, the armour is made to fit you. Terry makes the armour to fit you like a glove. However the downside to that is that if your weigh changes, you might struggle with the armour, but thats the case with any costume thats made to fit so closely.

Over the years, Terry English has been asked to produce a few USCM armour sets, and has improved the design along the way to make it more comfortable to wear. As with any creative process, more ideas come to you after the production.

The only real disadvantage to a set of Terry English armour is the price tag, usually £2,500 – £3,000 per set. But if you want what is the ulitmate colonial marine collectable, then the price is more than reasonable.

Find out more about Terry English’s armour by visiting his site: www.terryenglisharmourer.co.uk

Spatcave.com  produces sets of vacformed High Impact Poly Styrene (or HIPS) plastic armour. The armour is roughly £300, which is ten times less than the Terry English armour. Because of this and its good build quality, Spat armour (or Sparmour as Spat likes to call it) is the main armour the UKCM uses.

So what makes Sparmour so good then?

Well the main advantage of cost has already been hinted to, but the other plus sides are that the armour is quite durable considering the material it is made from. The armour also comes fully strapped and ready to wear straight from the box (You might want to repaint the armour to make it more accurate to the movie versions). The armour is also quite lightweight, so you can go long periods in the armour without too much struggle. Because the armour is plastic, it can flex and bend, which will increase your mobility and make the armour more comfortable.

A major plus point is that the helmet provided with the armour is a real M1 helmet, so if your running around in the heat of the moment and your helmet does fall off, it won’t shatter to pieces when it hits the deck (unlike the resin helmets that are available).

 All in all, Sparmour is the cost effective set to buy if you are watching the pennies.

We had the privilege of the presence of Ian Whyte, who played the Predator in AVP 1 & 2, Terry English, armourer for Aliens and the elusive Trevor Steedman who played Pvt Wierzbowski in Aliens. This man has a website dedicated to hunting him down by the way! And lastly we were joined by Spat from America (this is the guy who makes alot of the armour our members wear).

The weekend went exceptionally well. There were staged bug hunts for the public to participate in. This was Abe the Aliens chance to get even MORE pictures of himself taken. Trevor Steedman was a great sport and took part in the final hunt of the weekend in full Colonial Marine armour.

The Alien Encounter experience was there again, giving punters a scare as they are taken through a Weyland Yutani Research facility, when unexpectedly (or not) the Aliens escape!!

Spat held lifecasting talks. Our illustrious leader Mantroon was a volunteer for a face cast. The face was later put into a charity auction held on the Saturday night and bid on by members of the UKCM and UKG, all of whom only wanted to get it so they could destroy this unspeakably evil image.

A big thankyou goes to Malika Andress the event organiser for inviting us and making the venue available for such a great show.

A selection of video from the show can be found here. It is all in flash though and may take a while for the page to fully load.

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Both groups worked hard for many months preplanning the event and constructing the numerous props and paperwork needed for such a sophisticated event. On the day a number of technical glitches reared their head but through hard work and enthusiasm they were overcome with minimal disruption. Of particular note was the dedication to duty from Abe Alien whose selfless act of urine retention and use of a Lucozade bottle will never go unforgotten.

The experience was very well received by the pubic and sold out quickly on both days. One more than one occasion it was mentioned how realistic and well preformed the experience was. Comments proven when one attendee was so panic stricken she fled leaving one shoe behind!

The event was attended by the Harry Harris collection and archive who displayed a magnificent range of screen used costumes and accessories with the help of a number of other Aliens collectors.

We were very fortunate that both Terry English and Al Matthews also attended the event as special guest speakers.

At the social event in the evening the first ever round of promotions were issued to all the UKCM members who attended with special formal promotion to General for Mr Harry Harris. Additionally at the event there were three special promotions which in typical UKCM style were literally draw out of the hat. To great amusement somehow all attempts to fix the draw were unsuccessful and all three promotions went to UK garrison personnel.

A big thank you to Malika Andress the National Space Centre event organiser for making the venue available.