Hello, all.
I shot my replacement 40 cal. CZ100 (serial no. B04XX, manufactured early 1998) for the first time yesterday. For comparative purposes, I also brought along my trusty satin nickel 40 cal. CZ 75B.
I put 100 rounds of my target handloads (155 gr. Rainier FP-TMJ bullet, 6.2 gr. Universal Clays, OAL 1.125") and 10 rounds of WinUSA 180 gr. through the pistol during the session.
The trigger... still takes a lot of getting used to. The take-up was long and smooth, but the effort required to overcome the last bit of stacking and the abruptness of the break itself was throwing my aim off. One thing I noticed was the break point seemed to wander slightly from shot to shot, making it next to impossible to accurately stage the trigger. At 15 yards, using the modified Weaver stance, I was lucky to get a single shot from a 5-shot string into the 4" ring. Shooting from a sandbagged, benchrest position, however, was a different matter: I was able to land the majority of shots in the 4" ring at 15 yards. This tells me that the CZ100 is inherently accurate, just hard to shoot accurately (for me at least).
I was alternating between the CZ100 and CZ 75B during this range session; with the 75B using the same Weaver stance, I was able to consistently place the majority of the shots within the 4" ring at 20 yards. The 75B's SA trigger is, however, silky smooth.
Felt recoil was fairly sharp (especially with the 180 gr. WinUSA cartridges), but the compensator ports seemed to do a good job of keeping muzzle rise to a minimum. I did not notice any flash from the ports while firing my handloads, but the WinUSA cartridges did produce a healthy V-shaped flash. I also noticed that my face was being peppered with hot flecks of something with each discharge. They were not painful, just annoying.
I usually shoot 5-shot strings but attempted to load 10 rounds for functional testing. This was when I discovered that the stock magazines with the red followers were very reluctant to accept more than 7 cartridges. The only way to get the last few rounds in there was with the supplied mag loader and lots of hernia-inducing grunting. Inserting a full mag and then thumbing the slide release almost always resulted in a misfeed with the cartridge wedged at an angle between the roof of the chamber and the nose of the next round in the mag. This would only happen with full mags; feeding and extraction were perfect with mags loaded with fewer rounds.
It is my understanding that CZ-USA will, at no charge, replace the stock mags with updated ones (with black followers) if you send the mags back to them. I intend to do this something this week.
At this point, I am not really sure how I feel about my CZ100. It is a well-designed and well-built pistol, but I am not sure if I can ever get used to the DAO trigger. I shall keep it for now, but it won't take much to convince me to sell it.
DL
