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Post pics of your watches Part II
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Here are the actual watches issued to a Fleet Air Arm fighter pilot. None of this navigator luxury nonsense.
I have a sneaking suspicion real pilots just climbed in the cockpit and set the clock built into the panel and used that during the flight. I really can't see them messing about getting a pocket watch chronograph out, with the risk of dropping it if you didn't tie it on a cord.
We had a panel clock out of a Hurricane that a mechanic gave my father as a present. It was installed in a cabin cruiser my mother and father built in our backyard. Years later some thieves broke in and stole it from the instrument panel. I find it very curious that a thief would be such a discerning and sharp eyed horologist to even have the faintest idea what it was. None of the other instruments were touched.
Wibbs, can you account for your movements in or around 1975? You weren't in Australia at any point, by any chance?
;-)
Somewhere I even have some original navigation maps for the NW UK Irish Sea and NI as he was in and out of RNAS Eglinton in NI.
The Omega is 32mm and is stuffed; the JLC still works. I have to say those real men aviators wear massive flashy watches Brietling ads with a spitfire in the background annoy the shit out of me, knowing the truth was vastly different.
Post edited by cnocbui on8 -
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Post edited by dinorebel on20
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Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,351 Mod ✭✭✭✭
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This today. Tried and failed to get the feeling of the depth of the dial printing going on. Notice how these very early and pricey at the time new fangled quartz yoke's seconds hand hit the indices on the button. Some like Omega's first inhouse quartz movement actually added a teeny index wheel and finger setup to make sure they did and avoid the backlash inherent in quartz movements. The Girard Perregaux had a very fancy and torquey stepping motor unlike any others since that avoided both issues, and meant unlike competitors they had enough grunt to drive "normal" size and weight hands and a date that flipped instantly at 12.
This watch also reminds me that while today we're surrounded by IT and "microchips", back then unless you actually worked in Motorola, NASA or similar the first quartz watches like this were also the first time The Man On The Street had a "silicon chip" in his life. Then digitals came along and those were the first time the same bloke or blokess had LED/LCD's in their direct lives too. The arms race of quartz and especially digitals involved some of the top geeks and nerds in the world and played a significant part in the IT revolution to come. The revolution that allows us to view our watches on a flat screen, on our laptop, pad or phone. The first "smart watches" really. OK hey were pretty dumb and only showed the time and date, but in a radically different way, and far more accurately and reliably and then cheaply, without sacrificing the first two.
Many worry about Artificial Intelligence. I worry far more about Organic Idiocy.
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