[time-nuts] Beware the Casio WaveCeptor analog watch

[Tim Shoppa]

I had the black plastic digital LCD (no hands) waveceptor for 5+ years and
my only complaint about it was the short life of the Casio watch bands and
replacements which rarely lasted longer than a year.

3 years ago I upgraded to a Solar-powered Waveceptor WVA-640 with a metal
band and am very happy with it. It syncs to WWVB every morning 1-3AM all
the way out here on East Coast, and I have never observed it being off by a
fraction of a second during the day.

I have had other (Seiko) watch-hand watches that I had to do the
jiggling-the-hand-stepper-motor-to-be-in-sync thing - but only after
exposure to very close AC magnetic fields. Being within a few feet of large
multi-thousand-amp transformer windings, or just inches of a magnetic tape
degausser, can drive any analog hand watch bonkers, not just the stepper
motor ones. Skip, is it possible that your hand alignment problems are
because you were working near large AC or pulsing DC currents?

Tim N3QE

On Sun, Feb 25, 2018 at 6:52 PM, Skip Withrow <skip.withrow at gmail.com>
wrote:

>  Hello Time-Nuts,
>
> For many years I owned a Casio WaveCeptor digital watch and like it a
> lot.  The down side was that the battery had to be replaced every few
> years.  And since I had worn it for many years, the plastic case and
> crystal had taken quite a beating.  Finally, the pin holder that
> secures the band broke - end of watch (except as a 'pocket' watch).
>
> So, I went out and bought a solar powered analog version of the
> WaveCeptor (and vowed not to take it caving).  However, several months
> ago I needed to take an action at an exact time (not ebay) which was a
> miserable fail.  I found that the watch was over a minute off.
>
> I went back and explored the watch manual and found that there is a
> procedure to sync the minute and second hands.  I did this and after
> syncing to WWVB all was good.
>
> Now, a couple of months later I needed the precise time again.
> However I checked my watch before hand and found that it was 8 seconds
> off.  Ahrg!
>
> It appears that the stepper motor position of the second and minute
> hands can be jarred out of sync with normal wear bumps and shocks.
> The trouble is you don't know when it happens (unless you check your
> watch against a trusted source often).
>
> Now I'm seriously considering buying a solar version of the digital
> watch to get rid of the problem.
>
> Regards,
> Skip Withrow
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