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Christchurch invention assists Olympic shooter with preparations for Beijing

Friday 18 July 2008, 6:37PM

By Canterbury Trap Intl

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CHRISTCHURCH

Prometal Industries, and Canterbury Trap International received some unexpected television exposure last friday,

when TVNZ aired a sports feature on the preparations of Christchurch Shooter and current Commonwealth
Games Gold Medal holder, Graeme Ede, and his build up for the Beijing Olympics.

The news footage showed Graeme practicing for the Olympics by shooting over the "Autotrench" system, designed and

manufactured in Christchurch, and currently undergoing final field trials at the Canterbury Clay Target Club.
The Autotench is a computer controlled system capable of emulating the traditional 15 trap machine setup to deliver all of the 9 "ISSF" programs demanded by the Olympic shooting discipline.

The Autotrench requires less than 5 minutes setup at the start of the practice session and from then on,
a simple push of a button calls up any of the 9 Olympic shooting programs, a task that until now has been
a 3 person operation taking upto an hour for each program change.

The Autotrench has been designed to assist both the experienced shooter in preparation for competition,
and as an entry level system for Clubs that cannot justify the expense of a 15 trap machine layout and
full sized Olympic bunker.

Interest in the system has been received from around New Zealand, Australia, Fiji and the USA,
and with final testing expected to be complete by the end of August, systems available to the end user
before the end of the year.

Canterbury Trap Intl already leads the way in clay target shooting technology with its well established
trap machines and Voice Release systems, and now with this World first Autotrench system, is set to
revolutionise the Olympic Clay target disciplines.