TargetTalk

Today we visited the Walther factory and were given a tour by a former East German shooting champion, Sven Martini. What a great host and tour guide. The Walther museum is worth the whole trip over here. Examples of everything they have ever made, including an air rifle built in the 1600's.

I got to feeling frisky this afternoon and decided to once again climb to the top of the great cathedral. 742 steps to near the top at 151 meters. Great view of the city of Ulm and the Danube river.

Went to the Pfuhl Schuetzenverein for dinner and shooting tonight. Awesome club with 7 lanes of 10m and 3 lanes of 15m(for Zimmerstutzen) on the bottom floor and 16 lanes upstairs at 10m. They had quite a few juniors training and were very cordial to all of us as we slipped in among them and commenced shooting. There was hardly any language barrier and we conversed freely with coaches and juniors alike. I offered one young man a trip home with me and a room in my house if he would just come home and shoot for our junior club. He was a real hard holding 14 year old who has been shooting for 3 years. Great discipline, great form, great attitude, but no deal on the trip to America.

Had a wonderful dinner consisting of a sausage salad. Too hard to explain, but delicious and more than filling. Back at the room for the night now. It is now midnight and we are leaving the hotel at 7:15 to go to Neuschwanstein Castle then on to Suhl for the night.

Sorry about the lack of pictures. I know this thread is nothing without photos. But I am a total idiot when it comes to posting photos. Will talk to Scott about posting a few memorable shots.

Great report Mark .....keep 'em coming

Yesterday we visited Neuschwanstein castle in Schwangau. Beautiful castle on the inside, but we couldn't see the outside for the dense fog. Still a beautiful drive through the countryside and many great things to see. As we were leaving Schwangau the fog lifted enough to where we could see the old Hohenschwangau castle. Really looked cool through the lifting fog.

Drove from Schwangau to Suhl. This town is amazing. The home of so much of the German gun industry. In fact, as we were told at Anschutz, this is where the Anschutz family came from. The American army took the Anschutz family out of east Germany before the Russians could get them.

We hooked up with a good friend of Scott's by the name of Felix. He is an engraver with Merkel. As we visited over dinner Felix told us a lot about the gun industry here. He agreed to be our tour guide as we visited the Suhl Waffen Museum and the auto museum. This museum tour was another thing that was worth the whole trip over here. Inside the museum we were able to see some of the engraving that Felix had done. He is so incredibly talented. Of course, so is Scott. Scott had shown us some of his work while at dinner last night. Amazing stuff. These two guys are artists of great abillity.

After the Waffen museum we toured an auto museum that must have had 100 motorcycles in it. I am a motorcycle nut and could have spent the next several days taking a million pictures of this good old stuff.

Then we went to Zella Mehlis to another museum. This one was not so much about guns, but about the region. There was a replica of a proof house there. There were pieces of blown up guns in the ceiling and walls of the proof room. Also several examples of blown barrels and action.

Gotta go as my computer is dying. More tomorrow.
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After the museum tours we returned to our lodging. We are housed at the Olympic training center of the former East Germany. This is Ralf Schumann’s home range. We visited his 25m range. This range consists of 4 bays all with SIUS electronic targets. We also saw their 50m range outdoor consisting of over 90 lanes. These are all paper targets except for a section in the middle with 11 lanes having SIUS electronic targets for finals. There is a very nice seating area for finals. The area where the shooters stand is very nice with enough room for gear and still room for the range officers to move freely behind the shooters. There is a very nice indoor 50m range as well. It is set up much like our US Olympic Training Center range, with 50m one direction or you can put up targets for 10m in the same hall. Above this range is another 10m range with paper target carriers. Then around the corner from that is a very nice 11 point range with SIUS targets. There is also a complete shotgun range that we will visit also.
Our tour guide was Tino Mohaupt, a world class rifle shooter. He currently competes in air rifle only. Tino was in the USA this year for our World Cup. He explained that currently it is just him and Ralf Schumann who train here daily. The range is used for a few competitions for juniors during the year and is open to others to come to train, but in general is very sparsely used.
Tino allowed us to shoot on the 10m range. There are 5 of us on the tour who brought air pistols. One of us is using an air rifle that the Hangenham club loaned him the first day of the tour. Tino conducted a final for us after we had shot a 40 shot match. He conducted it similar to the style of the new rapid fire final where after a few shots the lowest score sits down then after each subsequent shot the next lowest score sits down until there are only 2 shooters. The score are cleared and these two shoot two shots each to determine the gold and silver medalists. It was a fun match.

I can't recommend Pilkington's tours highly enough. Every evening as we return to our lodging from a day of shooting, sightseeing, learning, eating and just shootin' the bull, this group is all happy and anxious for the next day's happenings.

More to follow.

Three of us are from the Arvada Colorado Rifle and Pistol club. We are pictured here at the top of the shooting club in Oberndorf. We climbed to the top of the building to see the town from a high vantage point.

Great description of the ranges and shooting, Marc. I enjoy your reports.
Ben

I enjoy living vicariously through you guys! I'm green with envy!

Left Suhl for Nurnberg. We stopped first at the castle with a shooting museum in Coburg. The museum was closed as most things are on Monday in Germany. Their website had shown them to be open all but Sunday. We managed to sweet talk our way in and had the entire castle to ourselves. Amazing amount of history there. Heavily into the international shooting sports from back in the UIT days up to the current ISSF. Many displays of medals won by German shooters and pictures of the many competitions.

After Coburg we continued on to Nurnberg. We visited the old city. Much of it had been destroyed by the bombing in WWII, but most has been rebuilt in the same old style. There are also many new structures within the old city walls. We had a tour guide this time who spoke perfect english as he was from Illinois. He studied history while in the US and married a German girl who was from a town near Nurnberg. His knowledge was amazing and he was able to even explain things about cities we had previously visited that we still had questions about.

This morning we left our hotel near the train station and went to visit the RWS plant at Furth. We were given an amazing tour there. We watched as ammo was tested on their 50m range. They were shooting for group and we watched as the technician fired several groups of 12-13mm. Now this is outside to outside, not as we are used to measuring inside to inside. So, if you take the 5.6mm dia of the bullet into account, these groups are 6.4 to 7.4 mm or .25 to .3 inches as we measure them. Awesome stuff for 50m. Of course, not all measure that well, but at the time we watched, this was the general average. We were shown some screen shots of some really amazing groups, but I won't post the size as you would never believe it. Also, these are 10 shot groups, not 3 shots.

We watched as 22 ammo was being made. The brass is primed with a dot of wet priming compound which is then squeezed into the bottom of the case to distribute the compound out to the rim. Then these cases are run through a drying area at 80C. Then they are loaded with powder and bullet. We learned, (and some of you smart folks may have already known) that lots of ammo like R50 are all made from the same spool of lead wire. Each spool can make enough bullets for 28 to 30 thousand rounds. When that spool is finished, that lot number is finished. Then the next lot number begins.

We watched centerfire cartridge making from the brass cup stage all the way to packaging. This tour in total took over 2 hours. Then we had lunch in the awesome cafeteria at RWS with our tour guide. He told us many hunting stories and related facts about animals and hunting in the region.

Well, I'm gonna go shoot now. We are at our last stop, back at Marzling at the Gasthof Nagerl to shoot against some of the locals from the Hangenham Schuetzengau. Won't write again until I am home from the trip. Then I may finally get the picture thing to work and will post a bunch for you to see.

Thanks for the report, Marc! We look forward to the pictures.

Have a safe trip back.
Ben

OK, here is an attempt at a picture. If this works, I will attempt a few more.

This is Bernhard (our tour guide) showing a test target for an FWB 700 rifle. This is 10 shots. They don't let them out of the plant until they can do this.

Bernhard and Scott outside the FWB plant in Oberndorf. Bernhard has been to the US many times to our World Cups. He is here to support shooters who use his FWB rifles and pistols. He was a very interesting tour guide due to his many years and extensive knowledge of the products.

This is the shooting club we visited in Oberndorf. The club, as you can see, dates back to the 1500's. This particular clubhouse was built by the Mauser family. Had a great time visiting and shooting and eating with these folks.

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The empty chair was mine. I got up to take this photo of Doug Shellenberger and Scott Pilkington with a bunch of our German hosts.

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Marc Orvin, Doug Maxwell and Steve Locatelli pose for posterity outside the Oberndorf shooting club. The three of us are members of the Arvada Colorado Rifle and Pistol Club.
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Bernhard from FWB shows target for an FWB P700 rifle. They don't let anything out without this kind of accuracy.
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Bernhard and Scott outside the FWB plant.
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Our whole group at the front office of the Anschutz plant with Jochen Anschutz. They were most gracious and allowed us to visit the factory and ask a million questions and they even answered the questions.
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Outside the Anschutz Factory.
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Product getting ready to be shipped.
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Precision parts


Stocks ready to be used.


Our tour guide shows the techique used to straighten a barrel blank prior to rifling.
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OK, I know this has nothing to do with guns, but did we ever have a great time in this place. You never know just what Scott has up his sleeve on a Pilkington tour of Germany.
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Debbie Orvin enjoyed playing with the train, switching cars and moving them back and forth like a little kid.
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Was Neddy there? How about our favorite bus driver?

Nette couldn't make it and we didn't have a bus driver. Two vans were rented by Scott, he drove one and Marc Orvin drove the other.

A factory 50 m testing range:


Refreshments at a German shooting club:


Demo on how to straighten a rifle barrel:


Lunch being served to tour group at Walther factory:


Two story airgun range:


There was snow above 800 m Thursday. View out Gasthause window on Friday:

Excellent pictures!

We visited the Muenster Cathedral in Ulm Germany. A couple of the younger guys and I climbed to the top balcony. I should have known better, but the view is great at the top.
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A view from half way up.
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The city from the top.
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The last trip I went to the top of the Munster, and it was an amazing view. It looks like it was another wonderful trip. Hopefully the next one I'll be able to make it. It really looks like it was another fabulous trip.

I see to Walthers delight they are still straightening barrels.