The range in Philippsburg is one of the biggest in Europe and the range has a lot of opportunities like 180 degrees shooting on almost every stage, long shots, and good sitting areas for the shooters, viewers and helpers. In 2001 the range was host for the European Championship and since then the range has developed quite a bit, and today the range service both military and police forces and civilian shooters.

This year we had to shoot 18 stages in 2 days; 10 stages Saturday and 8 stages Sunday. Overall the stage design was good and over normal standard and I appreciate when the stage designer puts on pressure with difficult targets where shooters must be aware of their skills. Herbert had two stages with “Bear traps”, a target with a no-shoot target in front moving up, so it almost hides the target. This bear trap gave many shooters problems on stage 8 and I saw some shooters shooting trough the no-shoot target or was to afraid and went for the slow option shooting in a small area where the A-zone was visible.

The only stage I found unfair was stage 12 and here you had to coordinate a lot of things and the first shooter never had a change to do it well. Odd Strengeness was the first shooter on your squad and he shot it terrible slow. I was last and got placed 4 with 96,99% and Oliver Josi won the stage after 2 re-shoots. The best stage of the match was undoubtedly stage 8, the one with the bear traps, one bobber, two poppers and several targets. Eric "the untouchable" Grauffel shot the bear traps while moving against it and ended up winning the stage in a fantastic time 14,52 (I shoot it in 20,29 sek).

My squad consisted of the Czech super Team, SPT-Team, Sphinx Team and Team Centerarms (myself) - and other fine people. Most of the shooters were Production shooters so it was a great fun to compete against each other. I got my new gun directly from the Sphinx factory in Interlaken the day before the match, but I also had brought my Glock because I have been shooting with this pistol for the last year - so should I really shoot the match with a brand new gun? Peter Heller from Team Sphinx said: "of course the gun is quality tested on the range in Interlaken so everything is okay!"

Lars Hagemann, Ralf Jensen and I went to the range Friday evening only 12 hours before the match and got hold on the Range Master Patric Kummer so I could test the gun. It worked perfectly and the precision was fantastic with my Swiss army ammunition DAG. The decision was obviously for me: I shoot with my new Sphinx 3000 Production Competition Pistol. On the first stage it felt very strange to shoot with this new and improved model from Sphinx, but I gradually became better and soon my Sphinx and I was friends again. Okay I admit that I had some AD against the targets because the single action trigger is tuned so well from the factory. The gun worked 100% through the whole match and it was easy to make A’s, but I also ordered an A’ gun ;-) I will come with a full report with nice pictures of my new Sphinx later…

How did it go? Well Eric Grauffel won in Open with 8,08% and the American topshooter Chris Tilley got a lesson from Eric how we shoot open here in Europe, Chris got 88,68%. In Production the winner was Miroslav Zapletal form Czech Republic, 2nd was Patric Kummer who shot the pre-match and 3rd was Rasmus Gyllenberg from Sweden who really did it well. The competition in the top of PD was very hard and from the winner to no. 15 there was only 10%. I got an 11th place 90,95% so I was satisfied. In standard Juan Carlos Jaime Diaz won and our Danish/Swedish friend Ralf Jensen got a nice 5th place with 90,02%

The biggest division of the match was Production…AGAIN and there were shooters from Czech Republic, France, Swiss, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Belgium, Nederland and Italy. In PD there were a lack of top shooters from Italy, Spain, Czech and Slovenia, but the competition was hard and it was a long match around 350 rounds.

All in all a SUPER match with nice people and good weather! I will personally give this match:



…out of 5 smiley’ but next time it would be nice not to include circus shooting stages like stage 12 and 17. Thanks again for a wonderful match and comradeship specially Hage, Ralf, Odd, Rasmus, Ulrik, Oliver and Peter! I will probably see some of you guys to the next match in Gothenburg – Nordic Championship in PD…

See you on the range…
DVC