April 2, 1930 - Berlin
The airship Graf Zeppelin, reprising her role from last year as a diplomatic workhorse, has left Fredricshafen for Hyderabad carrying Foreign Minister Stresseman to the Indian Victory Day event.
April 4, 1930 - Dresden
The light machinegun competition at the Infanterieschule Dresden has completed its testing phase, what remains is the determining of the winner and the placing of orders, if any. Reports suggest that the going-in favorites, the Swiss MG30 and the Czech ZB26, remain the favorites, but the old reliable MG08/18 was making a stronger showing than originally expected.
April 5, 1930 - Berlin
The Foreign Ministry has announced that the airship Graf Zeppelin has reached Hyderabad. The Foreign Minister is expected to meet with the Raj before the planned events of the 12th.
April 8, 1930 – Grafenwöhr
The normal quiet has finally returned to this part of Bavaria, with the ending of the demonstration phase of the tank competition. The apparent favorite, given comments overheard, seems to be the Christie M1928 or a reported successor to that design that the inventor has spoken of and shown plans for to the German representatives. A pair of dark horse candidates appear to be the Polish Type B and the Japanese Type 90, for different reasons: the Type B is a solid design with few flaws that appeared in the testing, while the Type 90 appears to be a superior vehicle suffering from normal prototype flaws.
April 22, 1930 - Dresden
The final report on the machinegun competition has been issued. It's findings were that the MG30 won the competition by the slimmest of margins over the ZB26, and by somewhat more over the MG08/18.
Colonel Rommel's comments in the conclusion, though, were rather interesting: "It is the recommendation of the testing team that a small number of these weapons be acquired as a adjunct weapon, while work is done on a new weapon that combines the light weight and handiness in the attack of the box-magazined weapons and the firepower in the defence of the belt-fed weapon. Such a weapon, if provided with multiple barrels and the ability to change barrels easily while hot, would allow the use of a single type of machinegun for both the medium and light machinegun roles. A single weapon could, if so equipped, go from a hand-help, box or drum-fed bipod-fired weapon in the attack to a belt-fed tripod-mounted fixed weapon when the infantry squad has attained it's objective and is now in defence."
[And so, Mauser will get to work on this, and in 1933, the MG33 (the real-world MG34) will be standardized as the standard machinegun for the Heere.]