{"id":508,"date":"2014-07-09T09:35:02","date_gmt":"2014-07-08T23:35:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/?p=508"},"modified":"2014-07-09T09:35:02","modified_gmt":"2014-07-08T23:35:02","slug":"pilot-watches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/?p=508","title":{"rendered":"Pilot watches"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Rolex\"<\/a>I must confess – I am a bit of a watch nut. And being a pilot adds an extra dimension when it comes to the selection of my ideal watch.<\/p>\n

First up, I love mechanical watches, particularly automatic mechanical watches. There’s something about the look and feel of a mechanical watch that\u00a0quartz watches just don’t do\u00a0for me. I love the way the second hand sweeps smoothly on a mechanical watch, compared with the tick-tick of a quartz watch second hand. And in my experience, the battery on quartz watches always goes dead when you’re miles from anywhere with a facility to change it.<\/p>\n

Next, I want a really clear, easy to read dial\u00a0– this is probably due to my advancing years and (allegedly) retarding eyesight, the need to see the time quickly at a a glance, even in bumpy air, and a love of the simplicity and elegance of an uncluttered watch face. Too many so-called pilot watches are cluttered up with numbers, extra dials and functions that you may use once in a blue moon, and when you do need to use them\u00a0you can’t remember how!<\/p>\n

Finally, as most of the times for pilots are quoted as UTC\u00a0– that’s basically the same as \u00a0GMT and\u00a0Zulu – and here in Australia we are anything from 8 to 11 hours ahead of GMT (depending on state and season), a dual-time or GMT indication is very useful.<\/p>\n

But when I factor in the price, that’s when\u00a0things get difficult…<\/p>\n

Possibly one of my all-time favourites is the Rolex Explorer II<\/a> with a white face. It meets all my criteria – except the main one: price. At around $7,500 it’s way out of my budget and even secondhand examples (if you can find one) are still very expensive.<\/p>\n

\"Steinhart\"<\/a>\"Torgoen\"<\/a>Another is the Steinhart Aviation GMT<\/a>. It’s a lot less expensive at around $550 but seems almost impossible to find. At the lower\u00a0end of the price scale are Torgoen watches<\/a> – in the main they have\u00a0quartz movements but they seem to be reliable and have some nicely designed faces. Their T25 GMT series starts at about $250 – of these, the T25104 with the white face would be my choice but the T25103 with a black face comes a close second, although reading the black-hand GMT pointer can be tricky until you know where to look.<\/p>\n

\"Chr<\/a>My own watch is a Christopher Ward C11<\/a>. This is an automatic mechanical watch with a lovely clear face. It doesn’t have a GMT indication, so I’ll have to make do with my OzRunways navigation app<\/a> on my iPad. Unless my fairy godmother comes up with a Rolex…but who believes in fairies?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I must confess – I am a bit of a watch nut. And being a pilot adds an extra dimension when it comes to the selection of my ideal watch. First up, I love mechanical watches, particularly automatic mechanical watches. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[164,180,285,478,722,763,832,938,995,1027,1105],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxbatpilot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}