[time-nuts] Us Time Nuts and... Wrist Watches.

Thomas A Frank ka2cdk at cox.net
Fri Dec 24 21:01:51 UTC 2010


On Dec 24, 2010, at 12:00 PM, Michael Poulos wrote:

> We all enjoy good accurate time keeping. :) What is your favorite watch? My watch (so far) is a Casio WaveCeptor digital watch that gets the WWVB signal and calibrates itself that I bought for $50 at a WalMart - the price of one Chicago parking ticket. Less than half a second off at any time, it is plenty accurate. The one exact drawback is that during night driving, you can't read it when you need to check the time. The lesser drawback is that it is not dressy.
> 
> A nice "dressy" radio controlled watch would be that Citizen EcoDrive watch shown on those adverts during football games. If it has glow in the dark hands and 5 minute markers it would be great if expensive. So, let's have it with the best watch for a time nut! (not including Tom van Baak's REAL "atomic watch")


I would suggest that the best watch for a time-nut is either the long out of production Synchronar, or one of the NIXIE tube watches that are presently being made (by list members, I think).

Unlike most quartz watches that utilize a 32768 Hz crystal, the Synchronar operates up around 700 kHz.  One of the built in functions is the ability to adjust the divider in steps of 8 seconds per year to fine tune the timing.  Mine has consistently been within 4 seconds over the course of a year for the last 20ish years (since the third year I had it, as I spent the first two adjusting it).

Sadly, they are rather uncommon and expensive when you find one...so much so that I rarely wear mine.  In its stead, a YES (by Wild Seed) is my usual watch.  Not terribly accurate (it runs a good 5-10 seconds per month fast), but it does a wonderful job of displaying sunrise, sunset, moon rise, moon set, and moon phase.  I've accepted the somewhat reduced accuracy for that capability.

Would I be expelled from the club if I admitted my dress watch was a Waltham pocket watch made in 1864 (not a typo), and that I was very happy with its 5-10 second per day accuracy?  I should be quite pleased if I work as well when I'm 156 years old.

Tom Frank





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