Older and better?

WHEN I started out as a journalist at a newspaper in the late 1980s we used typewriters, yes, that’s right cellphoneusing armchair warriors, typewriters! Remember those. Those who can recall the first so-called Wonder Nines will know typewriters were loud, but unaffected by very infrequent power failures. With an office full of reporters frantically typing away with a looming deadline, trying to concentrate on your own work was character building, at least for me during the first few months.
Writing a report entailed that each paragraph be typed on a separate piece of yellow duplicate paper, called ‘bloutjies’. Once the report was completed the bundle of papers were given to the news editor who would make corrections if needed. After the news editor approved your ‘story’ the duplicate was kept and the original ‘mailed’ by placing it in a cylindrical holder and dropping it in a pressurized air tube. Within seconds your hard work landed in the factory below us where the newspaper was painstakingly put together.
I never learned to type properly, using only two fingers (like I still do today) and it was slow going in the beginning. During these early days I must have frustrated our news editor tremendously as my slow typing always had me pushing my luck with the twice daily deadlines. He would sometimes come and stand at my desk and rip each paragraph from the typewriter as I finished and send the single piece of paper ‘down the tube’ to the anxious team below.
Interestingly when we moved over to computers the process became fraught with pitfalls, most common the ‘system or network being down’, or reporters ‘accidentally’ deleting a whole report that was sometimes worked on for days. In one case, the news editor cleaned out old files on the ‘system’ only to delete a book a veteran journalist had been working on for years. Of course enough space in the ‘system’ was a never ending problem. Most of these problems still persist. This did not happen when we were using typewriters!
Recently I was taking a long hard look at my carry pistol and asked myself whether I had improved my situation with technological advantages the modern era has provided. Firearms, notwithstanding tremendous development in recent years, have stayed pretty much the same. Yes, we now have ballistic apps and small computers in our scopes and weather stations, and modern manufacturing techniques saves costs and delivers amazingly accurate rifles out-of-the-box. In pistols the modern advances mainly meant introducing polymer frames and cheap to manufacture striker-fired mechanisms. At some point I started regarding my old CZ75 Compact (bought in the early 90s) as archaic, a typewriter in the modern age.
But recently I have been looking with new eyes at the old warhorse. This was mostly brought on by several problems I have experienced with more modern handguns, newer designs manufactured with (allegedly) better materials. And of course, now every new pistol needs ‘breaking in’ to function flawlessly, at least according to most YouTube experts. However, the number of rounds suggested to do this with a modern pistol is almost always quoted as ‘a few hundred’. So, I guess that pretty much means a thousand rounds if you want to play it safe. At roughly R7 per round for cheap factory ammo that’s R7000 to ensure reliability of a R10 000 handgun! This puts us back to the era where we had to ‘run in’ new vehicles.
Like the old typewriters in the newsroom, the CZ75 was extremely reliable from the first round, simply working when the right buttons or levers were pushed. With the dinosaur, no break-in period was needed, it just gobbled up everything, even my very first amateurish handloads.
And thinking about it, maybe the oldschool techniques used with a hammer gun are safer and more reliable than the more modern designs. If you have a light primer strike (not that that ever happened with the old CZ) all you needed to do was pull the trigger again. And unlike today, safe holstering was never discussed, you just kept your thumb on the hammer when pushing the pistol home.
Then of course there is the issue of reliability, a topic rarely discussed by those carrying CZ and original Browning Hi-Power 9mmP pistols on a daily basis. Today it is a hot topic on everyone’s lips, seemingly because with the plethora of more modern pistols available, this is really an issue that needs to be addressed. Of course, I am not arguing that there were no problems with the CZ75 or Brownings, but after firing tens
of thousands of rounds I have only had one failure due to the pistol. Take the so-called ‘most reliable pistol in the world’, the Glock – I have seen more stoppages in those in one range session than I have had in 30 years of shooting with my Compact.
Nor have I experienced a single breakage – although I am sure it has happened to some other owners. Yet, in the last three years I had three with ‘modern’ pistols.
This of course does not mean that Glocks and other well-known brands are not reliable, they are. But maybe the older design of the CZ holds its own fairly easily against the new breeds. I dare to say that it is more reliable than any polymer handgun out there. The reason for this is mostly based on the fact that my pistol has been able to digest any type of ammunition I could throw at it. Unlike many modern pistols the CZ’s favourite ammunition is whatever is loaded in the mag. And that my friends, is what it’s all about.
Will I now revert back to my 75 Compact? Probably. Although I have been in the privileged position to test many pistols over the years with Man Magnum Magazine, I realise that the venerable CZ75 is simply one of the best defence pistols available. The heavier steel frame makes it easy to control under recoil, the single-action trigger is worlds better than any striker-fired trigger, the doubleaction first shot allows for a wide margin of error when in doubt about pulling the trigger, the hammer makes it safe when holstering every time, and of course there is not much, if anything, to rival its reliability. The only downside is size, something the CZ75 Compact addresses well. So, what more do I need? Well, maybe a new breed micro-compact…

Trail Talk by by PHILLIP HAYES

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