New Pilot Watch (a new one for me, I mean)

Zagato

So, after following this thread for the last 3 months, I think it's probably about time that I (ahem..... the wife) parted with some cash (birthday coming up )

Want to get a Flieger, and would have loved to one of the 5 originals, but financial priorities lie elsewhere at the moment

Anyways think I'm going to get an Aristo, haven't heard anything bad about them, and they seem to have a reasonable movement, and I have fairly slim wrists so chunky watch doesn't really work for me.

At the moment am probably going to go for the Aristo Sextant 5H40S


Approx 38mm by 9mm thick, with titanium case

Best value I can find it at is from www.gnomonwatches.com, and I was just wondering if anyone had any experience of them. I saw one poor comment on another forum, but others seemed to come in and say they had had good experiences.

Any thoughts?

Wibbs

Nice watch. The dial reminds me of the WW2 B-Uhr variant for artillery guys. Gnomonwatches? Now this is going back years so maybe things have changed, but I bought a couple of straps and some mil issue surplus watches from him and I certainly couldn't fault the chap. One order went wrong and he couldn't have been more helpful.

Zagato

Thanks Wibbs, that's the sort of thing that I've heard, I'm just thinking though that maybe the difference in price is principally due to the lack of sales tax, and I imagine (they are authorised dealers) it's pretty likely I'd be paying that on the way in, so might have another look at some German sites again before I steal my wife's credit card (she suggested I get my teeth whitened as a birthday present :rolleyes:)

peasant

From having a quick look around German sites it looks like the smaller version of the "Sextant" watch has all but disappeared ...all I could find was the 44 mm version at twice the price.

But that was just a quick look.

Mitch Buchannon

Have you looked at another German brand called Archimede ? ( http://www.archimede-uhren.de/EN/Pilot-family.htm )




39mm in Steel. ETA 2824-2 movement. EUR345.00

Zagato

Thanks, it is very nice, but I like the face being a little bit different, and if I wasn't getting this one, would be more likely to get a one with the minutes on the outside and hours on the inside.

The price is €257 from Singapore + €15 delivery

Found it on a German site for €313 which is the usual price I think

I presume if I paid the customs coming from Singapore that would be 20% or €50, which would be no loss -thinking aloud here :cool:

PS Mitch your signature freaks me out a bit!

Bullseye1

Very nice but what is he idea of the reversed numerals?

peasant

Bullseye1 wrote: »

Very nice but what is he idea of the reversed numerals?

http://translate.google.ie/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aristo-watch.de%2Fsextant.htm



the special sextant watch with the mirror image writing would have found its place somewhere in this maze of lenses and mirrors (instead of the Casio )

Wibbs

Here's the original of the species. Even bigger(65mm IIRC) than a standard already huge B-uhr naigation watch of the Luftwaffe.

Bullseye1

Wow 65mm!

Zagato

peasant wrote: »

http://translate.google.ie/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aristo-watch.de%2Fsextant.htm



the special sextant watch with the mirror image writing would have found its place somewhere in this maze of lenses and mirrors (instead of the Casio )

So it can be easily read through a prism (the sextant) or in a reflection, as far as I understand

Zagato

Here's a nice blogpost of the history I found

The Aristo Flieger Sextant has its roots in a German sextant watch used by Wernher von Braun and his team at the Peenemünde rocket proving ground ("Heeresversuchsanstalt Peenemuende") in the early 1940s.

Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun (23 March 1912 – 16 June 1977), was a German-American rocket scientist and engineer who was one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in both Germany and the U.S. during and after WWII.


A one-time member of the Nazi Party and a commissioned SS officer, von Braun would later be regarded as arguably the foremost rocket engineer of the 20th century for his work at NASA. He was the central figure in Germany's pre-war rocket development programme, responsible for the design and production of the V-2 combat rocket first at Peenemünde and then Mittelwerk, after the British bombed Peenemünde in August 1943.


After the war, Braun and some of his team were taken to the U.S. as part of the then-secret Operation Paperclip. Von Braun worked on the US Army intermediate range ballistic missle program before his group was assimilated by NASA, under which he served as director of the newly-formed Marshall Space Flight Center, and as the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle, the booster rocket that propelled the Apollo II lunar mission. In 1975 he received the National Medal of Science.

Made by Lange & Söhne, the 22 of the watches were delivered to the Heeresversuchsanstalt in 1943 at a price of 360RM, as the equivalent of at least 2,000€. As a point of comparison, the first VW Beetles sold for 990RM.

When viewing at the dial through a mirror sextant, Braun and his team used the watch to calculate the ballistic data for the rockets they developed.

The Aristo Sextant (Ref. 5H40S), a modern homage to these watches, was first manufactured in 2001 by Aristo in Pforzheim. In developing this model, Aristo followed the first prototypes of 1942, with the guidelines : "Black dial with Roman numerals, with Arabic 1/5 Second indication numbers 5 to 55 and corresponding set of numbers in mirror writing".

Specifications:
Movement: Swiss ETA 2824-2
Case: Titanium
Case Back: Titanium Back with engraving
Bezel: Bead blasted
Dimensions: 37mm diameter, 44mm lug-to-lug
Water Resistant: Water resistant to 50m

Von Braun's long time colleague Arthur Louis Hugo Rudolph suffered a slightly different fate to von Braun. A fellow rocket engineer and member of the Nazi party who helped develop and produce the V-2 rocket, he followed von Braun to the U.S., working for the U.S. Army and NASA, where he was involved in the development of several important systems including the Pershing missile and the Saturn V. In 1984 he was investigated for possible war crimes and was forced to leave the United States and renounce his US citizenship.