It hadn’t been my intention to do another CZ 75 review a month after the SP-01 but sometimes good things come out of nowhere. In this instance it had been a “Kadet” model, which is a full sized and full weight .22 pistol which CZ had discontinued back in 2012. I couldn’t turn down the chance to get some range time with this sleek black pistol, and the results were quite extraordinary.
So what is a CZ 75 Kadet? CZ offers .22 conversion kits for their line of 75 pistols but for a limited time they had produced dedicated .22 pistols. What this means is that the components fit much better than if you had purchased a separate kit and slapped it onto an existing pistol. The care which had gone into the fit and finish was immediately apparent, too. The entire handgun save for the trigger has been given a black polycoat finish which had a quite pleasant feel and seemed to have held up well given that the pistol had come in as a used example and had been out of production for some time.
I have also seen references of a “Kadet 2” but as far as I can tell the “2” models are specific to the caliber conversion kits.
There were matching serial numbers galore. There’s one on the barrel, one on the slide, one on the frame, and one more on the piece which would have been the slide on a normal 75. Speaking of the slide, this pistol is a little awkward in its build. Normal CZ 75’s don’t offer much to grab onto where the slide is concerned since the rails are inverted compared to most other semi autos. The Kadet takes this minimalist approach one step further, the entire top of the pistol where the sights are mounted is one fixed piece. The ‘slide’ in this case is notably thinner than the pad of my thumb. It’s like trying to catch the side of a pencil! Fortunately the springs aren’t too strong, being a .22.
Then there’s the weight. CZ’s website claims that it shares the same weight of a 75 and I believe their claim. Everything about this gun felt like it was solid steel. The barrel and sights are fixed into place with the rear sight being adjustable. It’s a very rigid setup. I could tell that the Kadet would shoot better than I could. For the most part this held true, though it did surprise the heck out of me with my last two groups. We’ll get to that shortly.
The magazines hold ten rounds but I found them kind of finicky to load. Because they share the same physical dimension of a double stack 9mm mag there’s considerable bulk in the design, plus they lack a “cheater” or load assist tab. These, too, have a solid steel construction aside from having polymer baseplates. They also do not drop free, however upon further investigation there is what appears to be a hinged metal plate inside the back of the mag well which deliberately prevents them from falling completely out of the gun. It would not surprise me if this was an adjustable feature.
Sights on this model were three white dots and perfectly imitated a typical 75’s sight picture. They got the job done. Same as the grip panels which looked and felt identical to the checkered black rubber grips from the SP-01.
One note about the barrel, it sits lower in the Kadet compared to its centerfire kin. I was able to find pictures online of threaded barrels and it seems as though suppressors easily work on this pistol without interfering with the factory sights.
The trigger is mated with a left side frame mounted safety. Embarrassingly, as it’s a target rimfire I didn’t dry fire it and had only fired it in single action mode so I honestly do not recall if it had a double action trigger. Single action is absolutely where you want to be with a Kadet, however. It had a two stage feel, just a little bit of extra travel leading to what I would call a “good but not amazing” break and a tiny bit of overtravel. Again being honest I think I had set my expectations a little high for this trigger, there wasn’t that “wow” factor of a nicely tuned 1911. Despite this, it must be still good because the groups more than proved it.
So, yes. The groups. When I stepped up to the lane the carrier was already loaded in at 30 feet, so what the heck. I ran with it. I was using typical non-plated range food which we hand out with our rental guns, I’m not sure what the brand was but it was by no means match grade. My best five shot group came in at just around 13/16″. Not bad! Not bad at all!
Then it gets interesting.
One of our frequent flyers and avid .22 shooters suggested that I sent the target all the way out to 75 feet and give her another go. At this point I had already marked all six of the bullseyes on the paper so I decided to shoot between them all. At that distance with open sights it’s really hard to see the target but that didn’t stop the Kadet from knocking my socks off. The first group measured just under 2″. The second group had two flyers, one way high and one way low, but the other three? They’re all about in the same freaking hole. The total spread was 4.5″ but if you delete my two errors the group knuckles down to a svelte 1/4″. No kidding! My best group ever was also my worst group ever!
I partly blame not knowing where I was trying to aim on the paper, there was a lot of empty space to choose from.
It should come as no surprise that this Kadet didn’t even have a chance to cool down from my testing before it was sold. In very short order she has proven her worth and impressed several of us, even with a questionable shooter behind the sights.
So yeah. The trigger is definitely good.
I had also tried a couple double taps and quicker drills but at 30′ it understandably opened my groups by a considerable margin. Because of the Kadet’s weight I think it could handle a more rapid pace but personally I would have needed more practice than what one or two mags could have provided. My focus had primarily been on slow and steady to try and get the best possible results.
From looking around on the web it appears that there is still demand for the Kadet over the caliber conversion kits and I can see why. At the time of the review Gunbroker only had two examples listed. Here is a pistol which is much more rare than I had known when going in, which makes me that much happier to have gotten some time with one as it has certainly been memorable. I’m not a huge .22 shooter but I still agree with the others, CZ should bring this wonderful rimfire back into production.
