Airgunning

     CZ200 .177      

My youngest son is getting interested in Field Target but a S400 is way too much gun to handle for him. So I decided to buy him a CZ200.  Dave from DB Hengelsport made me a good offer on a CZ200 and a few days later I could pick up the CZ at DB Hengelsport in Helmond (The Netherlands).

Until now, I only saw these little guns in a light coloured beech stock, but this one had a nice dark coloured beech stock.

I assume this CZ200 would have a quick fill (and the CZ200T a pressure gauge) but it seems you have can have either one and have to specify when ordering.  Unfortunately I didn't specify what I wanted and I got one with a pressure gauge. But Dave offered me to order a tube with a quick fill and swap it for my tube with gauge. His service is as good as his prices :-).

The main reason why I don't like the tube with gauge is that you have to remover the cylinder completely from the rifle but even the standard muzzle brake makes it rather awkward. But having said this, with a pressure gauge you always know how much pressure is left in the cylinder.  So I decided to make a slim muzzle brake which would clear the cylinder completely.

That part worked out quite nicely, even from an aestetic point of view so the quick fill is no longer needed :-D.
Out of the box the trigger was, how shall I put this, a 4-stage unit ;-). Squeezing the trigger, you clearly felt a second stage, and a third stage, and even a fourth stage and just when I started thinking that the gun wouldn't fire, the gun went off :-O. This was asking for some radical actions ;-). There are about 4 screws in the neighbourhood of the trigger blade which come in consideration for adjusting the trigger. The manual does not make it much clearer so it was a matter of trial and error. After a few minutes of fiddling, the trigger was an acceptable 2-stage unit with a short first stage and a crisp second stage. The trigger can't be set very light but since this gun was meant for junior, that was rather a good thing.

Next thing I wanted to do was to turn the power back to get more shots out of a fill. Young shooters shoot FT out to 25 m (27.5 yards) so 12 fpe isn't needed for that. It was my intention to turn the power back to 650-700 fps with JSB Exacts (8-9 fpe). Out of the box, the CZ did 770 fps. Since I didn't know how far the restrictor screw was turned in, I turned it a full turn out, and another 2 or 3 turns out. The power went up to 900 fps or a (un)healthy 15 fpe !! By turning out the hamer tension screw, I could get the gun down to 710 fps, but this was a low as it would go, otherwise the hamer tension screw would fall out ;-).

The CZ was now ready for some test work. I had a crappy scope lying around, one that hardly reacts to turning the elevation turret, but since I had no other scopes available, this one had to do (I plan to put a 4-12x mildot on it). At 25 m, the guns shoots everything effortless through a tiny ragged hole. This should get junior through its first paces in FT.

May 28, 2007 by Mario Severi