Preparing for the journey 

Soon, I found my way into the official FedCon forum and was welcomed in a warm way by all the other fans. I also discovered that there would be a lightsaber fighting workshop - a very interesting opportunity for me, especially since I was leader of a fan project trying to create a non-commercial Star Wars game for PC. Enough reason for me to ultimately decide to attend the FedCon. Unfortunately, all of my friends who are interested in science fiction could not come with me.

As a member of the german Scifi-Forum however, I discovered that several other forum members would meet at the convention, so I wouldn't be alone at least. During my preparations, I took part in the wallpaper contest in the FedCon forums. It was a good opportunity for me to train my photoshop skills. Furthermore, the wallpapers would be shown on the big silver screen during the star guests' panels. While one of my wallpapers made the second rank within the contest - to my big surprise, as there was a stunning number of over 250 wallpapers being made by the fans.

As I knew that many fans would come costumed, I just had to tinker again. I already possessed a Force Lance from Andromeda which was signed by Captain Dylan Hunt himself - Kevin Sorbo. For those among you who don't know: A Force Lance is the primary weapon of the High Guard in Andromeda. It fires intelligent projectiles and can be extended to a melee fighting staff. So much at least for the theory - I still needed to create myself a holster belt which would resemble the original High Guard duty belt. So, that became part of my last-minute preparations for the convention.