20 minute read
RELOADED: KJW CZ75 SP-02
CZECH MATE
AA’S “MAN IN TAIWAN”, STEWBACCA, TAKES A LOOK BACK AT HOW AND WHY HE ENDED UP USING A KJ WORKS CZ75 SHADOW 2 FOR HIS ACTION AIR EXPLOITS.
Ihave experimented at great lengths in Action Air since my initial forays into it with my HK45 back in early 2019, then joining team SPPT in Taipei in February 2020 using my Glock 34 TTI, then switching to the KWA USP Compact for my qualification in March 2020, before trying out the WE M17 clone for my first competition in April 2020 and eventually settling on using the KJWorks CZ75 SP01 Shadow for my competitive shooting efforts. However, my teammate Ming came along to try out a session in late May 2020 and brought his KJWorks CZ75 Shadow 2 along to use, as well as letting me try it out in the practise stages. I found it more comfortable to use than my current SP01 and it also seemed somewhat of a tack driver in terms of accuracy by comparison, from that point on it was only a matter of time before I made the upgrade.
So, in August of 2020 I decided to invest in yet another birthday present to myself and stopped off at KIC Airsoft a few MRT stops away from home and took home a shiny new toy to put to good use. The advantage, of course, being magazine commonality with the SP01 magazines I’d already had trouble acquiring previously, as well as not needing to adjust my IPSC holster, as the external profile of the two pistols are largely the same.
WHAT’S NEW?
So what’s new? Why did the Shadow 2 capture my interest over the SP01 I already had?
The handling of the Shadow 2 just feels faster and slicker - the grip panels of the updated version are far flatter than those of the SP01 with an overall size of 28mm, versus the rounder footprint of the SP01 grips at 35mm. While this might make it seem smaller in terms of its overall circumference and thus feel smaller in the hand, coupled with the more exaggerated heel of the backstrap of the frame, I find it actually fits better in the strong hand, sitting a little higher and pointing a lot more intuitively. Also not slewing around in the hand as much during firing and movement due to the flat sides of the grips - making it easier to put retaining pressure on - than the more curved profile of the SP01’s grips. I really find it just ends up on the target a lot more readily and shoots and moves a lot faster as a result, while the inherent accuracy advantage I found with Ming’s example earlier in the year was still present in my own example.
The issues I found with the earlier SP01 had also largely been addressed with the Shadow 2 - this is unsurprising, as the real steel equivalent was developed with feedback from competitive shooters to ensure it handles more favourably in on-the-clock use. The ambidextrous safety levers are much flatter and lower profile to the frame, yet are still easily controlled with the side of the strong hand’s thumb with a sweeping motion enabling or disabling them consistently if the safety is required. However, the lesser emphasis on use of the manual safety in IPSC relevant manual of arms obviously drove the decision
to keep them out of the way of the slide stop/release lever, which retains the same form of the SP01.
The magazine release is improved and enlarged over the original SP01, with a greater overall footprint that’s 3mm longer and wider than the original, as well as squarer in profile and also 3mm prouder from the frame than the original as well, thus making it significantly larger and more easily actuated in a hurry. I’ve personally found it much more helpful for speed reloading.
The trigger is slightly re-profiled to make it flatterfaced and further forward than the SP01, which seems to make it more comfortable to actuate, as well as slightly shorter to enable the bottom edge of the trigger guard to be squared off without sacrificing the indent at its rear that allows the strong hand middle finger to ride higher into the frame. The front edge remains fairly square vertically and retains the serrated front surface of the SP01 for support hand grip if that style of handling is preferred and likewise, the deep scallops in the frame above the triggers are retained, allowing the support hand to achieve the same thumb drive grip or higher on the frame. The front and back straps of the frame are also more textured than those of the SP01, with all round meat mallet style checkering that improves grip over the predecessor’s thinner patches.
The top slide follows largely the same footprint, although the serrations are much more pronounced and coarse covering a longer area front and rear, with the front sets being pushed closer to the muzzle end and the top side faces of the slide being chamfered more heavily and angled inward, as opposed to the filleted and rounded off profile of the SP01. The slide looks and feels more aggressive, as well as being easier to manipulate during loading.
With the more slender frame and reduced safety levers, I had to adapt my grip somewhat to make effective use of the Shadow 2 as it lacks the thumb rest shelf option that the SP01 larger safety levers provided. Now I tend to point my strong hand thumb upward in a more exaggerated fashion and rest its inside edge against the lower profile safety lever.
The accessory rail on the underside of the frame is slightly simplified, with only a single transverse accessory retention slot present and moved further rearward instead of the three found at the front end on the SP01. While the front sight is slightly shortened (but still features the collimating fibre optic style insert to improve its clarity and ease of acquisition), the rear sight is much improved and can not only be drifted left and right for windage adjustment in its mounting dovetail by loosening of the two vertical grub screws that retain it, but also has a spring loaded rear block that is held down by a flathead screw which can allow fine elevation adjustments.
Only recently I finally got around to properly adjusting these, having struggled with consistency in previous months of training. Using heavier 0.3g BLS ammunition and also switching to black rounds to prevent me relying on visual tracking of my shots instead of my iron sights as I should, my general usage of the Shadow 2 had greatly improved. However, I had a high left bias of shots which I eventually got around to correcting by adjusting this rear sight properly and now the Shadow 2 will carve out the “A” embossed into the A zones of a cardboard target at around 10 metres.
OBSERVATIONS
The takedown procedure is largely unchanged; the retention of the slide is still by way of the slide stop/ release lever and the slide must still be retracted slightly to align the notch in its left rear portion with the corresponding one on the frame. The reinsertion of the stop/release lever can still be an issue due to the hairpin spring as with the earlier SP01. The recoil spring now includes an improved spacer buffer at the rear end where it interfaces with the frame when installed, however, remains a loose component rather than a captured or unitised affair.
The magazines are basically identical to the SP01 offerings, aside from the profile of the baseplates having slight indents in them which allow for stripping forcibly from the magazine well should the need arise, although again this is less of a concern in airsoft pistols as the kind of failures or malfunctions that necessitate such features in real steel pistols just won’t occur. However, the magazines also suffer the same cool down drawbacks as their earlier predecessors and, along with having to use the hair dryer or air heater unit methods to try and increase their
temperature between rounds of shooting at training, I have also resorted to purchasing CO2 magazines more recently as well as a bulk box of 50 12g capsules to enable me to make effective use of the Shadow 2 even in the cooler months here in Taiwan (where the winters drop below double digit temperatures which is enough to cause problems at times).
The use of CO2 definitely gives a noticeable increase in slide recoil impulse and snappiness of the action cycling, as well as a more visceral muzzle report. In general, the whole experience using CO2 is much improved and each capsule can deliver around 75 rounds consistently, thus allowing three full magazine loads to be fired during more open practise, or 5 loads in terms of stages where I am limited to loading 15 rounds anyway due to production division rules. Thus, they offer a very effective, reliable and easily trusted manner of operation especially in competitions when speed and dependability are everything.
I made use of the two CO2 magazines I purchased as my front line options for the most recent competition (as featured in my Action Air article in Airsoft Action Issue No. 125 - May 2021) and they performed flawlessly. The only downside to using them occurred immediately afterwards at the next training session I attended. Even though I had switched back to using green gas magazines as the weather improved somewhat, I found that the outer barrel had been overstressed and outright cracked during one of my drills while doing individual training.
Evidently all that extra impulse from the CO2 usage translated to greatly induced stress on the slide and outer barrel. I imagine it was a result of the brass cross pin - which retains the inner barrel floating within the outer barrel and limits its travel - hammering against the rear portion of the outer barrel at the limit of its rearward travel during recoil, thus causing a crack that propagated throughout the outer barrel and sheared off the rear chamber section as a result.
Having pushed the Shadow 2 to breaking point, I feel that this is not a terrible drawback given the sheer abuse and tens of thousands of rounds it must already have put down range. Most sessions entail firing around 400-500 rounds including the individual practise drills we do on our own and then running through training stages or drills in turns as a team later. The wear and tear on an Action Air competitor’s pistols are immeasurably higher than your average skirmisher.
This mishap put my Shadow 2 out of service for a few weeks while I awaited replacement parts. I bought a spare SP01 barrel from KIC thinking it might be compatible, but they are in fact slightly shorter and have a different profile to their locking lugs at the rear end near the chamber which prevent them operating properly in a Shadow 2. So I ordered two spare barrels through Chris Leung at SPPT’s home training field and we installed one, as well as taking a look at my double action operation issue with my SP01 of my previous review.
The new replacement outer barrels have been redesigned to remove one side of the cutouts that the brass retention pin runs in. I imagine this has been a recurring problem with European users who favour CO2 powered magazines for cooler weather and thus have encountered fractured outer barrels often enough for the feedback and warranty issues to effect a design change on the part of KJWorks. Suffice to say, the new outer barrel design looks less likely to fail in the same manner and has a lot more meat left in it by comparison and, hopefully, that will be the end of this issue. To be fair, the only real one I’ve found with the pistol so far and somewhat of an extreme case due to the wear and tear I’ve imparted on it.
Magazine availability and reliability issues aside, if you can forgive the more minor drawbacks of the Shadow 2 and enjoy its improvements in handling and appearance over the SP01, then it’s definitely a more solid contendor than all of the other pistols I trialled to get to this point. Despite my teammate’s efforts to try and convince me to come over to the dark side of fudd guns and race queen HiCapas, you know I’m stubborn and don’t want to be like everybody else. I’ll keep running my beloved Shadow 2 into the ground against the clock, eventually I might stick a longer barrel, compensator and red dot on it and run it in open then switch to my newly acquired birthday pistol - a VFC Walther PPQM2 National Police Authority (Taiwanese police standard sidearm) - to run production class with a more typical style of carry pistol.
Maybe... AA
THE NEED FOR SPEED: PART I
ALTHOUGH IT MIGHT SEEM THAT WE ARE ALL CONSTANTLY LOOKING FORWARD TO THE “LATEST AND BESTEST” INNOVATIONS THAT WILL MAKE OUR AEGS AND GBBS UTTER DEVASTATORS AND BRINGERS OF DOOM, IN PART 1 OF A TWO-PART FEATURE, BOYCIE TAKES A LOOK BACK AT WHERE WE’VE COME FROM AND HOW WE CAN USE THE SIMPLEST OF “FIXES” TO OUR BEST ADVANTAGE!
Istarted my interest in airsoft in 1994, before that building the LS pellet firing kits …and if anyone of you calls me “grandpa”…! The progress of engineering and design has risen stratospherically since the first AEG “automatic electric gun” was made by Tokyo Marui way back at the start of the 1990s! There were only one or two AEGs available and after a few years it seemed that TM and Classic Army were the only makers out there which were regularly seen on skirmish sites.
Fast forward 30 years and FAMAS is no longer the only AEG out there but it still is “the bestest gnu”, as Frenchie and Bill so eloquently argue in Red Cell this month. Nowadays though, we have a wide range of manufacturers offering a vast range of replicas and their own designs of RIFs. We can see things ranging from a simple M4 or MP5, right up to the Pulse Rifle seen in the Alien series of films. One thing that perplexes me to a point though, is the apparent “need for speed” within airsoft.
RISE OF THE MACHINE
We can liken the rise to modern levels of technology to that of Formula 1. Players wanting to push for every fps and cm of range they can get from a RIF and, like in Formula 1, just because you have the most expensive and technologically advanced equipment, it doesn’t always mean you have the best kit on the day. It also means you need to pay a lot of money for all the “upgrades” needed to achieve those gains. You can have a rifle firing bang on 350fps consistently and reaching 70m to hit an A3 sheet of paper on a still day - but come the weather and the effect on the BB means you may not be able to hit the same target at 35m. Back in the day of EG700 type motors and 7.2v batteries, the play style was more “spray and pray”. One way to increase this slow rate of fire was to fit “High Speed Gears”, which would bring the ROF up to something half way between running an 8.4v and 9.6v battery on a standard motor.
Then Marui released the EG1000 motor and this
became one of the first “upgrades” we would fit to our AEGs. Also around this time, 8.4v NiCad batteries of around 1600MAh made of Sub C cells were the norm. Some would even fit 10.8v or 12v batteries, hoping that their rifle would last the day. I even remember one guy using two 7.2v batteries to make a 14.4v. Needless to say, the gearbox lasted a few hundred rounds before it lunched itself but it was fun while it lasted!
UPGRADES “OLD SCHOOL” STYLE
Back in the day, upgrades to the FAMAS would be (maybe) running an 8.4v NiCad in place of the recommended 7.2v and also cramming in the heaviest spring possible and hoping the gearbox would last the day. In the early days there were no adjustable hop units, plethora of hop rubber compounds etc. It really was mostly “plug and play”. Life was simple and we didn’t even have any FPS limits!
Further progress came when Marui brought out the EG1000 motor in place of the EG700 which was, for the time, a huge increase in performance. That and added to the more prevalent 8.4v NiCads and some 9.6v, 10.8 and even 12v batteries were beginning to be seen. Back then the 9.6v (for example) was a hefty lump of a battery needing a lot of space to be stored in the AEG. We’d regularly be shooting full auto all the time and it wouldn’t be unknown to run 10 plus x 450rd M4 or 600rd AK type magazines - and even having to refill them - during a game. Ammo counts back then for a day could easily reach 20,000 per day and Excel was about the pinnacle of BB manufacture, costing around £8 for a bag of 2,200. Nowadays, play in the style of play I enjoy means a bottle of 3,300, if I played each fortnight, could last me up to 3 months.
Modern levels of technology and materials performance mean that higher speeds, higher FPS and range are achievable with pretty impressive reliability from the lower end models. Pushing the envelope of performance will always be the aim of some players; this is great and should be applauded as without this innovation the sport would still be using the same old tech 30 years later. As with motor sport, there are the top-flight formulas which are at the cutting edge but also some people still enjoy racing the older cars like in the Classic series.
Progress in any sport is inevitable but like in motor sport, there are some of us “old school” players who have evolved over time to be leading the charge for innovation and engineering advances. But there are still a number who like running “old school” type rifles where, jokingly, FPS is known as “Faulty Player Syndrome” and ROF is known as “Rate Of Fail”. They don’t chase every fps that they can, it’s just fit a battery, fill with BBs and play.
Don’t get me wrong, every facet of the sport (yes I do regard it as a sport) has its place and I’m more than happy to see “speedballers”, hard core MilSimmers, Skirmishers and those who just don’t care that they just pick up a pistol, put on their safety glasses and go out bare chested, wearing shorts and boots. The ultimate aim is to have fun, blow off cobwebs/steam and go home to our families afterwards with a sense of enjoyment in the time spent with like-minded people. No one part of the “sport” is any better than another, we can all co-exist, play and have fun. There are specific events which have tighter rules on what kit can be worn and used, but general open skirmish days can find MilSimmers wearing accurate Military Kit and replicas, playing alongside Speedballers dressed in bright clothing, multi-coloured RIFs and Dye Masks, and down to the new players using twotone Ifs, to “rentals” who are trying out the sport for the first time. To quote Shaun, who some old school players will remember as “Eznugud”, co-owner of Lightfighter Urban in Sheffield… “At the end of the day you’re grown-ups, dressed as soldiers, playing with toy guns.... Just how seriously should you be taking it?”
I’m not, in any way, against innovation and performance “upgrades” but my philosophy is to buy a rifle, run it for a few game days then approach how to improve parts of the performance to reach what I need. Other players will buy an already quite expensive rifle and then splash 1-2 times its value on “upgrades” …before they even use it on site. That, as well, is fine. It’s what they want to do with the budget that they have available.
A lot of players who are either starting out or on a lot lower budgets, don’t have the cash available to spend £600 on a rifle and then another £600-800 (or more) on upgrades, so this part of the article will look at getting the most from what you have on a budget.
KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID!
The thing I hear a lot from new players is: “I want moooooaaar range!”
Well, for this you don’t need to throw hundreds of pounds of parts into a RIF. The first thing I suggest is to take the inner barrel and hop assembly out of the rifle, take the standard inner barrel out and clean it properly. This can be as simple as using the cleaning rod and a couple of sheets of kitchen roll to clean the inside of the barrel. Pulling it through until the kitchen roll is clean. You can also dampen the cloth/kitchen roll with some warm soapy water.
Once this is done and fully dry, the next thing to look at is the hop rubber. Some manufacturers fit hop rubbers to their rifles to suit their primary market and with the ambient weather conditions this means a harder rubber compound will work better, say, in Taiwan than it will in a more temperate climate. For the UK and much of Europe the “best” compound for around the 1 joule (328fps) is a soft or 50 degree. Before fitting the hop rubber it’s a good idea to clean off the release agent from the inside of the rubber, this will mean less time needed to “break in” the rubber and get the best level of performance from it more quickly.
I still hear from time to time, the old wife’s tale that using a spray of silicone up the feed nozzle will affect range. Well, yes it will - but only to drastically decrease it! The whole idea of the rubber is to grip the BB and help impart the spin which stabilises it in flight. Putting silicone oil on the rubber will be akin to pouring oil on a wet road surface. The more grip you have on the BB the better. Fit the clean rubber and bucking (now referred to as a “nub”) back to the clean inner barrel and reassemble into the rifle. I find it best to still run a few hundred BBs through the rifle before the best performance becomes noticeable.
Next month we hand over this section to one of our newest “Legionnaires”, Dan in the USA, to carry things forward into more modern times, so stay tuned, and look forward to some fireworks in Issue 130!. AA
