PPL nav timepiece

[Corsican]

Hello all

First post so nice to "meet" you.

I have finally started nav for my PPL and my current wind up watch tends to lose time erratically. I have seen some other posts on this and am considering the following options:

Stopwatch Buy Boys' Sports LCD Stopwatch at Argos.co.uk - Your Online Shop for Children's watches. (http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/2779384/Trail/searchtext%3ESTOPWATCH.htm)

Or

Watch
I am thinking with a bezel or an analogue/digital (for the minutes) and use the digital for the stopwatch
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lorus-R2341DX9-Mens-Watch/dp/B004QMU2OW/ref=sr_1_1?s=watch&ie=UTF8&qid=1369559511&sr=1-1&keywords=R2341DX9

I want something simple and affordable so that I don't faff around with it and can focus on everything else. The stopwatch seems straightforward and cheap. Wondering if the watch is practical in case I punch the wrong button.

Thanks in advance, next exercise is on Saturday... Weather permitting !

Cheers

[mad_jock]

Both will do the trick nicely and are in exactly the correct price bracket.

[Dark Helmet]

Perfect choices, either will do. (I might get the Lorus watch myself!)

[caber0]

Stopwatch not really necessary for PPL nav just a wristwatch that is easy to read minutes. I find biggish dial analogue good esp mil style with minuite numbers around the outside.

Caber:)

[Pilot.Lyons]

On the cessna i learnt in we had a leg timer which you can just reset at each point...no watch needed.

Although for my birthday 3 years previous i did get a seiko pilots watch with flight computer and separate stop watch built in (little red hands) ... Not needed it so far though ;)

[Whopity]

no watch needed.As part of the PPL skill test the candidate is required to pass ETAs to the examiner for each of the turning points. A leg timer is of little use for that!

An accurate watch is all that's required, the easier to read the better and if you need a stopwatch an analogue one is more intuitive than a digital one.

[Corsican]

Thanks all, that's really helpful.

I have a Laco (nice big dial, minutes clear and easy to read) which does the job except that it looses a few minutes here or there. It worked fine on the first nav but decided to fall 7 minutes behind just after I landed/refuelled. Probably needs a service after 6 years or I should have bought the more expensive model.

In any event, will look into the watch option or perhaps borrow my wife's jogging watch - hang on, there may be a GPS built into that?;)

Have a good bank holiday Monday if in the UK.

Corsican

[KNIEVEL77]

Have a look at the Torgoen T10, purpose made watch for pilots and about £100!

Big, clear and easy to read. :ok:

[mad_jock]

Which is exactly the wrong price bracket.

And as soon as you see "a watch for pilots" that's exactly what its not for PPL students.

Although to be honest the T10 is pretty good to be honest. Only thing I would say is a bit dodgy is that it is a wind up job. Better to have a solar powered battery watch. But then we are into citizen and again outside the ppl bit of kit price range.

If the OP wants to buy a watch for anything else apart from flying crack on and spend more money but if they want to just buy one to do the job it shouldn't be more than 10-15 quid.

[KNIEVEL77]

The Torgoen T10 is battery powered!

[Pilot.Lyons]

Quote:
no watch needed.
As part of the PPL skill test the candidate is required to pass ETAs to the examiner for each of the turning points. A leg timer is of little use for that!

Oh forgive me, i mean no seperate stop watch!

Wow, im still shocked but cant ever think why, when i know what this place is like.

Some times a little common sense wouldnt go a miss in life, sadly it seems as though its not as "common" as we would like.

[Ty-Fry-Typhoon]

Has to be the Breitling Navitimer which for £5720 is reasonably priced, personally I wouldn’t pay less than £3000 for a watch, remember it has to sit on your arm and show what the time is and can you really trust a watch less than £3000 to do that?

Only joking of course, the ones you have shown are fine, my last watch was from China on eBay for about £3 delivered, only lasted six months before all the plastic started falling off, still told me the time though. Got a Casio from Argos for about £15 now and that does the job fine, my students joke I went all upmarket!

Enjoy the Nav :ok:

[Pilot.Lyons]

Quote:
Has to be the Breitling Navitimer which for £5720 is reasonably priced, personally I wouldn’t pay less than £3000 for a watch, remember it has to sit on your arm and show what the time is and can you really trust a watch less than £3000 to do that?

Haha love it :)

[Obi_Wan]

There are more Blingmaster Skygod watches on the market than you could imagine.
Despite having a watch fetish (I'm now up to 9 timepieces...) the most useful timepiece I've ever had for flying is this, the ASA flight timer:

Asa Flight Timer (http://www.flightstore.co.uk/search/asa-flight-timer)

Two separate timers means I run one constantly for fuel, and the second one measures different legs of any navigation.
You will need to time your legs during PPL training - you will use the leg time to confirm where you are at various stages along that leg, and confirm you are on time, before your next leg.

This timer also has a clock (12H, 24H and Zulu), as has been mentioned already it is time at turning points you will need to report.
Clips neatly onto a knee board, and does exactly what it says on the tin.

Old Ben

[youngskywalker]

Oh here we go again! I give it less than a few hours before someone reports that he proudly wears a 'Mickey Mouse watch' that cost him 50p from a market trader in 1972 and thats all you need along with a Tesco carrier bag! ;)

Interestingly those sort of people are called 'reverse exhibitionists', Hitler used that same technique by always wearing a very modest uniform so that he stood out amongst his flamboyant Generals like Goering!

Makes you just as bad as those you criticise for wearing 'bling' :E

[mad_jock]

Oh here we go again! I give it less than a few hours before someone reports that he proudly wears a 'Mickey Mouse watch' that cost him 50p from a market trader in 1972 and thats all you need along with a Tesco carrier bag!

50p in 1972 was worth a fair bit.

Actually Tesco's bag's have gone down hill, the eco friendly reusable ones for a quid are pretty good though.

Seiko Solar for me or a Zulu hand eco-drive but nothing over 100 quid for work. We have 8 different ways of telling the time in the cockpit the easiest way is still looking at your wrist.

[1800ed]

I find all I need is something with a second hand. My Swatch seems to do the job fine :)

[thing]

I use my jogging digital hand timer (one of those things that has a little loop for your wrist) and just put the loop over the yoke. Nice big numbers and as you turn each leg you start another lap. As someone said, if you have a posh ADF box it has an elepased time jobber on it anyway.

Best thing is to use a form 20 and then you can use a GPS on your skills.

[Ringway Flyer]

I ended up with a personal specification:-

1. Must be EASY to read. (Second reason - when away from home useful to have a watch that can be read in poor light in a hotel room at night, for example). So, black face, white hands and luminous.

2. For timing between check points, a rotating bezel is very useful - just zero it against the minute hand at one CP and read off the time in minutes from the bezel en route to the next.

3. Have a scratch resistant face - 'hardlex'?

I found a Swiss Army one which I've now had for 10 years. Cost about £60. Just needs a battery every 4 or 5 years, and shows little sign of wear. Even the plastic strap is still in good order. And it gains about 10 seconds a month. Good enough!

There's a 'happy medium' between the overpriced bling and the cheap & throwaway types.... You pays your money & takes your choice! (My father told me never to buy cheap tools - you just end up buying them twice. He was right.)

RF

[Agaricus bisporus]

If you need a timepiece for mdr nav it needs to be easy to see and big enough to read.
1)Even with a sweep second hand a wristwatch satisfies neither of these as it is seldom possible to read the minutes.
2) It is on your wrist and therefore out of easy vision/scan.
3)The stopwatch buttons are almost invariably too small and fiddly to be satisfactory in practice.
4) operating it takes both hands out of action simultaneously which isn't the best of ideas.

If your aircraft doesn't have a suitable stop-clock/timer fitted (!) you may need a traditional 2 inch size stopwatch with a big, positive click action - preferably analogue for ease of reading mounted on your clipboard or on a mount on the yoke or panel. They cost probably under £40 new on ebay.
AGAT Vintage military Russian USSR pocket mechanical stop watch chronometer EXC | eBay (http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AGAT-Vintage-military-Russian-USSR-pocket-mechanical-stop-watch-chronometer-EXC-/111073689615?pt=UK_Jewelery_Watches_Watches_MensWatches_GL&hash=item19dc82000fOne)
One of these, or similar is simply unbeatable for ease of use.
Accuracy simply is not an issue for practical purposes, even if it gained/lost 30 seconds an hour (it will be far, far better than that of course) it's more than accurate enough for nav.

Wristwatches are nigh on useless for nav, "pilot's" watches with those three tiny dials that are completely impossible to read accurately, if at all, are for posers and Walts. They are a waste of money.

I very much doubt any serious pilot uses one for real. Certainly in my 15,000hrs of very varied flying I've never once seen anyone use one. (No doubt I'll be bombarded with Typhoon pilots saying otherwise but I remain sceptical)

Those that sport the brick-sized bling variety tend to be PPLs and low hours rich-daddy pay-to-fly FOs. Or ex-fighter pilots - see line below. After all, everyone knows £50,000,000 fighters don't come with clocks...

Still, if you imagine it makes your willy look bigger...

Mickey Mouse for me! (seen several of those over the years - often on very experienced wrists)

[dubbleyew eight]

if you want a watch to actually fly with.....

glance at the watch for just a second and look away. can you work out what the time was? in bad turbulence a seconds glance may be all you get so a watch face you cant read quickly is useless.

digital number faces are also pretty useless because you can't look at the estimated time enroute on your gps then look at the face and work out what the time will be when you arrive. say you'll be there in 15 minutes. it is quite easy to look at the watch, work out where 90 degrees ahead of the minute hand will be and have your answer.

the lumibrite face on many lorus watches is worth having as well. when you have the aircraft all tucked away in the hangar and you need the tacho hours the lumibrite face will light it up enough to read the figures off.

also any of the battery quartz watches will be 5 times more accurate than a mechanical movement. if they go slow or become erratic just put in a new battery.

pilots who actually use their watches often have the simplest watches.

[jecuk]

posh ADF box

Now that I would like to see! A contradiction if ever I did see one!

[tmmorris]

As the GPS has a much more accurate clock than most watches, why not just ask it to display ETA NEXT in one corner?

[2high2fastagain]

I've never got on with stopwatches. I seem to drop them or reset them when I'm flying. I have found a cheap digital watch with nice big numbers on it which works really well for me. If you have a Decathlon near you, go and have a look. I recently bought a black Geonaute watch from there for about 8 quid. It has a chrono and big numbers and not much else (other than a strap). You have to hold the reset button down for a few seconds before the chrono resets itself, which is godsend if you are reaching behind the seat for a chart (which seems to happen all too often)

[Crash one]

Like what dubbleyew eight says. An anologue watch with a clear uncluttered dial, If you glance at it for a second or less you can "see" the time & remember the hands positions. A digital you have to "read" & understand a bunch of constantly changing numbers, which is a lot more difficult. However, I got a cheap £12 digital stopwatch which I made a clip for & it is fixed to the panel in front of me if I do need to time something & mostly is set to the time of day. At least a digital stopwatch will tell you that it has been, frinstance, 5 minutes 50 sec & not a guess at how many times has the thing been round the dial, unless you squint at the very small dial telling you revs.

[Big Pistons Forever]

The only timepiece that I use anymore is a cheap kitchen timer with a really loud buzzer. I set it to buzz when it is time to change fuel tanks.

[CharlieDeltaUK]

This one is good:

Buy Salter 4 Way Kitchen Timer at Argos.co.uk - Your Online Shop for Thermometers and timers. (http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/1023938.htm)

[Corsican]

Funnily enough, my first watch in the late 1970's was a Mickey Mouse one and it was a gift so free! It was unfortunately destroyed when I decided to test if it was waterproof by putting it under the tap (it was not - I have developed some common sense in the intervening years I think/hope).

Many interesting options to consider here. I was wondering about a bezel as it does seem quite an efficient way to set the time. On the other hand - given my current stage in the nav, I may end up faffing with the bezel, get the time wrong, wander off course etc.

Analogue and simple does seem more intuitive, a big time piece / chronograph like the Russian may work well. Just trying to keep the budget. I fully agree that you get what you pay for if it is super cheap, but equally want to make sure that it is something that I will get some decent use and do the job.

So... at this point, I am going to see how the nav exercise goes this weekend (if the weather... will... cooperate...). A friend is lending me his timer so will see how that works out and will then put some money down next week. Not sure if it is more complicated to work the wizz wheel or choose a nav timer :). Thank you all for your good advice, very much appreciated.

[mad_jock]

I may end up faffing with the bezel, get the time wrong, wander off course etc.

You are a wise person that's exactly what happens to most. They screw up the leg purely because of faffing with things.

Turn onto heading note down the time then get sorted out and stable on route a FREDA check then work out the next time over waypoint then into the work cycle.

KISS is definitely the way forward.

[tmmorris]

I have a Citizen Skyhawk AT and a Pebble. I love both but neither is ideal for flying - the Citizen is too complex (all I use airborne is the main dial though at least switching from UTC to BST and back is child's play, though I do use the bezel occasionally for a quick calculation while planning) and the Pebble I regard as a Beta watch ie not reliable enough in flight yet. The latter has great possibilities though - my normal watchface is based on the Torgeon and has the same clarity, plus the watch lights up if you shake it.

Tim

[dubbleyew eight]

this is not a problem you would see in england ....but on the other side of the world there is a huge difference between local time and gmt. 8 hours for me.

I fly cross country with a watch on each wrist. The unusual wrist has the watch in GMT. that way when the radio tells you a gmt you dont have to force a preoccupied noggin to work out how far from 'now' it is.