History HW-internet competition

2023 – 2024

In 2023 and 2024, I spent an extended period in China. Although we frequently visited this beautiful and exceptionally friendly country, there were times when we were confined to home due to my wife’s illness.

During these periods of staying indoors, I never grew bored thanks to my many hobbies. However, even after I stopped actively participating in shooting sports, the interest somehow stayed with me.

In this time, I repurposed a previously developed scoring software originally built for the Historical Weapons Group into a freely available software package for clubs across the Netherlands. See www.hw-scoreverwerking.nl

At some point, once the software was ready for distribution, the idea emerged to develop an international (English-language) version in the future. But before releasing it, I first want to thoroughly test and refine the Dutch version.

It was also during this time that the idea of organizing an international postal competition took shape. In the Netherlands, there aren’t many national open competitions, and there’s only one annual league. This league was organized by me and a fellow shooter for several years after taking over from the previous organizers. See www.club-hw.nl.

However, in 2022, due to a lack of volunteers across various clubs, we had to discontinue it. Since then, another group has restarted it on a smaller scale.

The annual league ran at a few participating clubs, but it became increasingly difficult to motivate volunteers. This led to the idea of setting up an online postal competition, inspired by existing postal competitions for air pistol, air rifle and, in the past, small-bore disciplines.

However, the concept of making it an international competition for Historical Weapons disciplines is entirely new and has never been done before.

2025

After finalizing the idea, developing the scoring software, and building a website, I approached several shooters in the Netherlands to participate in a trial run in 2025, testing whether the setup would actually work.

Over time, a few minor adjustments were made, but by mid-year, the system proved to be working exceptionally well.

Since everything is functioning smoothly, preparations for the international launch were further developed by mid-June 2025. This way, registrations for the competition can open after October 1, 2025.