RAF G-Shock Watch
 

Anyone fancy one of these then? I am guessing that Flt Lt Nathan Jones is an FJ mate with a bit of time on his hands then.....(or a Puma mate)

G-Shock's £500 RAF Watch Lacks Shiny Hardware to Avoid Being Spotted by Enemies | Gizmodo UK

Does look like a nice watch though, but at £500 = a bit steep for a G-Shock, no matter how non-shiney it is! :sad:

Well there's always the Citizen Skyhawk AT Red Arrows edition:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5082/...af7eb938a3.jpg

Or for those with an American bent, the Blue Angels version:

http://ak.buy.com/PI/0/500/218839425.jpg

Or you could of course just buy the normal one. Which is a damned fine instrument.

http://www.goldandtimes.co.uk/ekmps/...-a-t-862-p.jpg

Doesn't Mickey Mouse wear an RAF watch?

:p

Wokkamate - he's a very capable VC10 mate, Skis for the RAF and plays rugby for the RAF - featured in the Help for Heroes televised rugby match a few months ago and is also, annoyingly, a bloody good bloke. This, I believe, is part of an arrangement that the RAF has with Casio for sports various.

Looks quite a nice addition to the collection.

Roadster, I have #3 in silver and very good too. When the clocks changed it changed too, no fiddling.

PN - As do I. Need to send it off to have the bezel changed though, the markings are all scuffed. I never thought I'd be one to use a slide rule, but for quick back-of-fag-packet calculations, it's been far more useful than I had thought.

The "never needs a battery, never needs to be set" aspect is what appealed. Also the ease of changing the analogue hands between timezones. I use that quite a bit.

http://www.vintagelcd.com/images/wat...01-400x500.jpg
Cost, about 20 quid.
Dual time zones (one always on zulu). Alarm & stopwatch and countdown.
Gains 1 second a day (reliably).
Used for diving to 40m and timing astro fixes as well as all the usual pilot stuff. Over a year at sea, racing and cruising.

A previous version broke at something above 50,000 feet when the glass popped out (intact), presumably due to pressure differential as there is no screwdown. Other than that, no problem.

Needs a new battery every 5 years and a new strap every 2.

Of course, one uses a genuine mickey mouse watch to time-hack big formation briefs, just to annoy the mud-movers.

Pressure differential certainly but no because of lack of a screwdown but lack of a PRV.

Even our watches are wanting to leave early now?

Nice to see it was designed with just pilots in mind!
I guess the rest of us that fly can stick with the other "fiddly and expensive ones getting covered in dust and grit or knocking it on the side of things" :hmm:

Bit sensitive aren't we?

ACW

Well, that's reassuring then. About time for a decent aircrew watch.

However, NO metal wrist bands. NOT waterproof. A make that even the loggies can FIND NEW BATTERIES FOR.

Only the pilot in command requires a Government-supplied watch.

CM,

The nav watches isued in the '60s were special. True they were not waterproof and you could reasonably expect not more that a couple of seconds error by the end of a trip. They had one special feature that was both hated by the wearer and a superb FS feature.

It had a special stainless steel bracelet that could be put on over the nav gloves. When wore with a shirt the bracelet ripped the cuff and dug in to the flesh. When worn over the glove then you couldn't take the glove off. As more navs worked in an office rather than a cockpit they used to take the gloves off once airborne.

Most of us pried the bracelet off - it had fixed rods on the watch - and put on nylon straps :) As it happened one strap was in the sqn colours so it was a no brainer.

Oddly enough H&S and FS were not that strong and we got away with it.

Issue watches are for friday night happy hour conkers arent they?

Mine was a three-er.

I have #3 as well - a fine robust bit of kit. I am too deaf for the alarm to be any use but the rest of it works as advertised. 15 minutes in direct sunlight runs it for 6 months.

It does look a nice watch - and in the grand scheme of things, if it's a decent well made piece of craftsmanship, then a monkey isn't completely out of order when you think that some people pay as much for a single watch as we get paid in a year.

That said, I am with Fox3 on this one. I normally wear a Tissot, but for ops I leave that at home and take a £10 casio digital job with me. Something I learnt very early on - never take anything on ops you wouldn't mind breaking, losing, having pinched or in extremis bartering with.

If you want a more traditional one, Lufthansa have a 747 limited edition Swiss movement pilots style. watch at 199 Euros
A bit like the seiko in style

https://www.worldshop.eu/medias/sys_...0417_RD_01.jpg

See

https://www.worldshop.eu/lws/product...417/detail.jsf

They do a couple of others too

https://www.worldshop.eu/lws/product...22/detail.jsf?

PN, so true. OK, so a steel bracelet version for desk-bound aircrew, nylon in sqn colours for airborne aircrew. Fair policy?

Nutloose, that is like a nice version of the old nav watch. Rather like it, but these days I'm looking for a good dive watch with very big numbers so I can see them.

Courtney

It looks like #3 watch is quite popular :ok: