On a personal note – Interview with Tanja Loch from the all4shooters.com editorial team
Hello Tanja, we've been working together for more than a year now – it's about time we introduced you to our readers in more detail. Why don't you give us a few biographical details about yourself?
I'm in my early 30s and come from beautiful Heidelberg. Since graduating from DHBW Mannheim (Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University) with a degree in Business Informatics, I have remained loyal to the IT industry and have been working as a project manager ever since. In my free time, I can often be found at the shooting range, at one competition or another or often out and about in the great outdoors with my dog.
How did you get into shooting sports?
I have always been fascinated by shooting sports. Initially, however, I only had contact with sport shooters through Easter Egg shooting (Editor's note: a German Easter tradition where people shoot air rifles at small targets and win a colored egg every time they hit the target) with diabolos at local shooting clubs. At some point, an acquaintance took me to a firearm shooting event in Philippsburg. There, in the Mecca of shooting sports, I tasted blood and joined the club. At first, I only trained with a rimfire pistol (CZ P09) because I didn't have my own equipment. When I got my own firearms license in July 2021, I quickly acquired a 9mm pistol. I was pretty brave after getting my own gun and signed up for a Steel Challenge and Speed Steel match the very next weekend. At the time, I didn't know that you had to zero a gun in the first place (even with mechanical sights!). I then completed the IPSC safety and rules test quite quickly in order to take part in my first IPSC competitions. I met my husband at the shooting range. Shooting is better than any dating portal – so to all the singles out there: get out to the shooting range 😉! I'm learning more and more with every competition and every training session and I'm excited to see where my journey will take me in terms of performance. There's always room for improvement.
Sport shooter Tanja Loch competes in her IPSC and Steel Challenge matches with this equipment
What equipment do you use when shooting?
Let's start with the most important thing – my match gun from Carl Walther. I shoot a Walther Q5 Match Steel Frame in 9mm Luger with brass grips from Lokgrips for extra weight and use a Leupold Deltapoint Pro optic. The spring set from Sprinco is also fitted. As a Star Wars fan, there was only one logical color choice for me: white. After all, as a greenhorn, you need an excuse if you don't hit the target one hundred percent – and the Stormtrooper look helps immensely.
Many people are surprised by my retro glasses – but they serve their purpose wonderfully: their extremely thin temples mean that they don't put pressure on your head even after wearing them for a long time and they are comfortable to wear.
However, choosing clothes as a woman is not as easy as I think. There are lots of pants, but many of them either don't have belt loops, sit too high or too low or are made of extremely thin and delicate fabric. As soon as you put on the shooting belt, you ruin the material with the lower belt because the Velcro fastener inevitably gets caught somewhere or everything (especially the holster) sits too high or too low. In my opinion, 5.11 have thought through their leggings design the best: robust material, relatively thick fabric, reinforced knees and virtually indestructible belt loops.
Is there a shooting event that will stay in your memory forever?
On the one hand, it is certainly my very first competition directly after receiving the gun, but on the other hand it is also the 2023 IPSC European Championship in Corinth. Although I only took part in the pre-match, I was also there with my husband during the main competition. It was quite a challenge: 6 stages per day had to be shot four days in a row – at different time slots. But it didn't stop there. We were also on a training stand almost every day, honing our basic skills. When I was through with the pre-match, it was my husband's turn to take part in the competition. It was a huge honor to be able to watch the top shooters and represent my sponsor Carl Walther. There were also a few goosebump moments – be it during the march-in of the nations at the opening ceremony or the honour of being able to support the German team with the organization.
Tanja Loch's area of responsibility at all4shooters.com
Why don't you tell our readers what you do here at all4shooters.com?
With pleasure! I've been supporting the all4shooters.com team as a freelancer for over a year now. And this has also become part of my hobby (and also a project close to my heart 😉). True to the motto of all4shooters.com "from shooters – for shooters", it is particularly important to me to report on modern shooting sports not only in words, but also in pictures. In my opinion, there is a wonderful community in the shooting sport with many people who are extremely committed and do voluntary (club) work. Unfortunately, this is given far too little attention in the media. Shooting sports are unfortunately frowned upon in many places and there is far too little coverage of the fact that there are very strict safety rules to ensure that the sport is more than safe. So far, I have already written one or two match reports, such as about the IPSC European Handgun Championship 2023, a guide to air travel with firearms, a report on my experience with ceracoting my firearm or, for example, about the SHOT Show.
How does your journey in the shooting sports sector continue now?
I started documenting my shooting journey on my Instagram channel t.shooting.journey. But my journey is far from over. There are still numerous topics that interest and concern me – a hunting license or several excursions into other disciplines are still pending, for example, and in a few days we'll be flying to Las Vegas to report live from the SHOT Show 2024 on social media for the fans of all4shooters.com.
Here you can find our preliminary report on the SHOT Show 2024 on all4shooters.com, which Tanja Loch will be reporting on together with her husband Marijan and Franco Palamaro.
