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PILOT WATCHESPILOT WATCHEShour at a time, as well as have an alarm Citizen Watch Company, now thethat doubled as a second time zone. world’s largest watch company, has beenAlthough for most of its life, the 7T62 offering what Rolex called “tool watches”movement ticked inside of traditionallookinganalog-clusterfor some time now. Citizen has offereddials,recently Seiko attacheda slide rule to the outsidebezel of the watch in orderto provide pilots with amore practical instrument.In an array of case finishes(steel, two-tone, all-gold),Seiko brought to the worldits new “Flight Computer”model in 2006.Within the Skyhawk family,Citizen has offered theBlue Angels, a variationdedicated to the famous,elite, aerobatic flying team.As an added bonus, this watch is also a flight watch, the Skyhawk, since the200-meter water resistant, something mid-1990’s, but has recently updatedmost pilot watches are not, since they’re it by offering it with Eco-Drive technology.Within the Skyhawk fam-designed for air-use and not water-use.The USD $450 price point for the steel ily, Citizen has offered the Blueversion on bracelet is appealing, too, and Angels, a variation dedicatedmakes it a watch that any budding pilotcan afford. (For the digitally-minded, batic flying team.to the famous, elite, aero-Seiko also produces another pilot’s watch All Skyhawk modelsusing an analog-digital dial (model offer an analog/digitalSNJ017) available for USD $495.)dial with three sub dials.The first, at 10 o’clock, indicates thetime in 24-hours that the analog handsare set at. The second, at 2 o’clock, is adedicated GMT clock, and gives ZuluTime in hours and minutes. Below theseis a sub dial which indicates the functionbeing shown within the digital windowsat the current time.With the digital windows, the wearercan easily access the time in 22 timezones, time events for up to 24-hourswith 1/100th of a second accuracy, timeapproaches with a count-down that canbegin as high as 99-minutes, and includes3 alarms which can be set to differenttime zones (for example home,GMT, and local time when traveling). Inaddition to all of these, the watch hasa perpetual calendar that will track thedays and months into the next century.The slide rule is easy to grasp thanksto four yellow notches that protrudegently from the bezel which facilitateturning, and the watch is water resistantto 100 meters. In its titanium caseand bracelet, the Skyhawk Blue Angelsis comfortable and light weight. Bestof all, this watch never needs a batterysince it is powered by any light source.A more recent contender in thearena of flight watches is Chase-Durer.This company was founded in themid-1990’s in Beverly Hills, California,and produces its watches in Geneva,Switzerland. From the outset, Chase-Durer wanted to produce reasonablypricedpilot watches, and has addedmany watches to its palette since itsinception.mechanical movements, all reasonablypriced for watches of theirconstruction. www.chase-durer.comConclusionA whole slew of other companiesoffer some type of pilot’swatch including such brandsas Oris, Blancpain, Omega,Tutima, Sinn and GlashutteOriginal. Though not aswidely produced asdive watches, flightwatches havenonethelessgained a resp e c t a b l eniche in thewatch industry,with moreand morec o m p a n i e sjumping onthe bandwagonevery spring.Lastly, with theThe Squadron Commander is a quartz-advent of GPS (Glo-based model using a Swiss ETA move-bal Positioning Satel-ment with an analog readout. Besideslites), the functionality oftime and date, this movement offersmost pilot’s watches haschronograph able to track 60-seconds,truly made them obsolete,30-minutes and 10ths of a second.save for GMT or UTC timeHoused in a 40 mm case made of 316Lcoordination for logging pi-surgical steel with sapphire crystal andlot entries. But the mystiquea 100-meter water test, the Fighterof owning such a 20 th cen-Command offers great Swiss featurestury piece of wrist machineryand looks for a Japanese price of $650.has not dimmed one bit, andCitizen’sEco-DriveChase-Durer has a number of pilotwatches available, and a quick tour oftheir website will show both quartz andfor the watch industry, whenit comes to pilot’s watches, thesky’s the limit. nChase Durer’sSquadronCommander12 August 2007www.hrwatches.comwww.hrwatches.com August 2007 13