Thursday 9 August 2007

Nordic Post & Telcomms Industries

The 2007 Nordic Post & Telecomms Industries (P&TI) competition took place in Norway, at Elverum, just North of Oslo. The Championships are run every two years and rotate between Denmark, Sweden, Great Britain, Finland and Norway.

Travelled to Heathrow, joining the other eleven members of our party. Spent the night at the Holiday Inn - room was OK, but no time for breakfast as we needed to get the shuttle bus at 4.30am.

Heathrow check-in and customs was its usual chaos, despite having been informed in advance that we had firearms, as usual no-one had told the check-in staff. Then they decided that we needed to pay an extra £20 per firearm, after some discussion this was only applied to the eight smallbore rifles, not the air rifles or pistols. Of course, the "checked-in baggage" counter was all the way down at the other end of the terminal. We missed breakfast and managed to get to the gate at 7.10am just as the flight was boarding.

From Oslo airport we caught the train into Oslo to stay two nights. Sunday was a free day and most decided on a boat trip down the coast to a number of museums - the Kon-Tiki museum, Maritime museum and the Viking Ship museum, among others.

On the Monday we caught the local train to Hamar (about 1 hour 25 mins) where we needed to move across the platform to get the next train to Elverum (about 20 mins). The train attendants were jumping up and down a bit as we took a bit of time getting all the luggage off the train at Elverum.

Accommodation and competition was to be at the Terningmoen army camp, not far from the train station. The accommodation was a single-storey block with four large rooms with four bunk beds and a single shower room, for which a male/female rota was drawn up and posted on the door.

Beer on the army camp was less than half the cost of the hotel in Oslo, a half-litre can costing 35 NOK whereas the hotel in Oslo was charging 53 NOK for a 300ml bottle.

The ranges were about a half mile away from the accommodation, so it helped that the weather was mostly dry, only on the Tuesday did it rain all day.

All shooting was done on Megalink electronic targets, the 10m targets being moved to an outside range for the 3P and prone rifle.

The 25m pistol was also shot on Megalink targets and the Norwegians loaned us three Walther GSPs and gave us 600 rounds of Ely Standard ammunition. One of the GSPs developed a habit of firing two shots instead of one, so the four of us shared the other two that worked without any misfires or misfeeds.

Practice was limited to the Tuesday, which didn't leave a lot of time to get used to the 10m indoor or the GSPs on the 25m range.

Wednesday saw the air rifle and pistol competitions, I came 2nd in the air pistol and Geoff 2nd in the air rifle. The air pistol team took 2nd place (to Sweden) and the air rifle 4th.

Sport Pistol was down for Thursday, as was the half-match 3P. At the end of the Sport Pistol I had taken third place out of the 19 entries, which I didn't think was bad with a borrowed gun and a half-day's practice. Janet took 3rd place in the half-match 3P and the 3P team were 2nd.

Friday was taken up with Standard Pistol and the 50m prone rifle. I finished in 2nd place and Roger took 3rd, which, along with Steve's score gave us 2nd place in the team, beaten by Sweden. The prone team took 1st place, with Brian in 2nd and Angus 3rd. - GB also took 5th, 6th and 7th place out of the 28 entries.

Return to the UK was on Saturday, with a taxi from Elverum to Oslo airport - the luggage moving courtesy of a Norwegian Postal van. For some reason the aircraft took off a half-hour late, which, with another half-hour in a holding pattern over Heathrow, made us an hour late landing.

Yet more chaos collecting our guns at Heathrow, this time they insisted on moving all the guns into the Red lane at Customs before releasing them to our custody. The customs people were only interested in making a note of the smallbore rifle serial numbers, a total waste of time as I'm sure they do nothing with the information.

A shuttle bus took us back to the Holiday Inn so we could collect our cars and then we were all off home.

Planning for the whole trip was by Janet, who once again did a marvellous job. The 2009 Championships are planned for Denmark.

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