Looking for an affordable chrono / slide-rule (E6B)

[pantagruel]

One of the benefits of the Orient is it has an AR coated sapphire crystal.

[Him]

That Citizen BY0000-56l is really sharp! And it does everything. Perpetual calendar, atomic, very readable slide-rule, and the chrono is a sweep design (1/5 second "ticks" instead of one per second, right?).

I'm really digging it so far. I have exactly one gripe...I wish the 24hr subdial could be set to UTC.... but I can remember "-6" I guess. :)

I'm not sure how many "ticks" precisely but it's definitely smoother than a full second. 1/5th looks about right but if you told me it was 1/2 I might believe you. It works well and of course that hand is also used to indicate radio and alarm status in different modes.

[TickTockMan]

Anyone have experience with the Aeromatic 1912 slide rule watches? I'm wondering about the quality of the inner rotating ring.



I'm wondering if the bottom edge of that white ring is uneven.

So far, I have direct experience with a Citizen Nighthawk and a Rotary Chronospeed. The Citizen's rotating ring operates smoothly and evenly. The marks also line up very well, although I returned one earlier because the marks didn't line up well on the two sliding scales. On the Rotary that I had (for a day), the marks didn't line up especially well. And when I turned the crown, the inner ring didn't just rotate but it moved back and forth and even vibrated a little. Because of that experience, I'm now suspicious of inexpensive slide-rule watches.

[TickTockMan]

So far, my three favorites are the Hamilton Khaki Chrono E.T.O., the Orient CTD09001B (Dyno), and the Torgoen T1.



The Hamilton would be a massive splurge for me. I think it looks handsome, and it impresses me as being carefully designed for functionality and legibility. The outer bezel turns without the aid of a crown. The left side of the watch has the setting crown and the chrono pushers. The right side has an upper crown that sets the number showing in the 12:00 window, to remember a result (I think). The chrono seconds only go tick-tick-tick, once per second. But there are two long chrono seconds hands, and the lower button on the right makes one of them stop to record the current position of the other one, which keeps moving. The case is 42mm in diameter, 13mm thick, 100 meters water resistance, and has sapphire crystal.

Here's a picture of the Orient "Dyno" CTD09001B, from Anzac's Orient WatchSpot:

The CTD09001B has a sapphire crystal with (I think) AR coating. The case is 44 mm by 11 mm, or 42.6 mm by 10 mm, depending on who you ask -- wide and flat. Water resistance is 100 meters. It seems very easy to read. I like the continuous analog-like sweep of the chrono hand, which is due to the Seiko 7T62 movement. The alarm can also be used as a second time-zone. The bracelet has solid links.

The Torgoen T1 is a real pilot's watch. Most of them that are still for sale are black case / black dial, but I like the look of the white dial:

To rotate the Torgoen's internal ring, you turn the crown on the right, which is a lot more convenient than the more common placement on the left. It's a big watch: 42mm case and 14.6mm thick. Water resistance of 100 meters. Very readable slide rule.

They have different personalities. What do you think?

[Andrew McGregor]

Take a look at the slide rule on the Torgoen... it's lined up at the 60, yes? Now look at the bottom of the dial... it's off by half a gradation! Fail, epic fail... that offset has totally messed up all your calculations. The same can happen because there's a gap between the slide rule gradations on other watches... less serious, but still a failing. You want no parallax (Seiko SSC fails this way, because one scale is behind the crystal, one in front) accurate scales (Torgoen fails there) and no gap between the gradations (Orient and Aeromatic are failing on that).

So, Citizen and Breitling get all this right, and Seiko do on some models but by no means all. Hamilton I think do OK on the model above.

Of course, none of this is particularly serious if you don't intend to use the E6B. But it might really mess you up if you do use it and aren't aware of what it takes to make one right.

[PullTheTrigger]

Take a look at the slide rule on the Torgoen... it's lined up at the 60, yes? Now look at the bottom of the dial... it's off by half a gradation! Fail, epic fail... that offset has totally messed up all your calculations. The same can happen because there's a gap between the slide rule gradations on other watches... less serious, but still a failing. You want no parallax (Seiko SSC fails this way, because one scale is behind the crystal, one in front) accurate scales (Torgoen fails there) and no gap between the gradations (Orient and Aeromatic are failing on that).

So, Citizen and Breitling get all this right, and Seiko do on some models but by no means all. Hamilton I think do OK on the model above.

Of course, none of this is particularly serious if you don't intend to use the E6B. But it might really mess you up if you do use it and aren't aware of what it takes to make one right.

It sounds like to me you have a critical need to use slide rules on watches. I agree with you 100% this is off, but for the slop factor, that is manageable.and if you know already, that it is off, you an compilation for it. On my ssc I have no issues at all.

[pantagruel]

The Casio Edifice line also has some models with slide rule bezel chronographs that can be had for around the $100 mark.

[TickTockMan]

Hey Pantagruel, how's the precision of the dial on the Casio Edifice models?

I think you said that that the slide rule on your Orient was acceptable -- not perfect, but comparable to your Citizen? I was looking at pictures of the Orient this weekend, and comparing them with pictures of that Hamilton. The orient doesn't have as fine resolution in the scale at certain points, and the major divisions are signified by fatter marks (rather than longer), which makes them trickier to line up accuarately.

I looked at some Citizens today. One of them had a white slide rule ring that, when rotated, seemed to me to have some of the back-and-forth slop that made me return the Rotary. Maybe I just got lucky with my Nighthawk.

The more I look, the more I question spending the money! Maybe I'm too picky. I really like the slide-rule but I'm starting to realize that even a "decent" one like mine is going to be slightly imprecise. That bugs me -- how hard can it be to print that part?

I looked up info on the Hamilton this weekend. I can get it grey market and save $70. I'm tempted. But I realized that it needs to have the battery replaced every few years, and Hamilton wants you to send it to one of their service centers, which I would probably do. That costs (today) $55 + shipping. Plus the inconvenience. Kind of pricey for a watch that isn't always on my wrist every day.

So I started thinking about the Citizen eco-drives. Unfortunately, I find myself wishing they were (1) thinner (2) cleaner looking, with less bling and (3) more convenient to use. When I looked at watches this afternoon, I asked the guy in the shop but he didn't know which buttons to push to exercise various features. He told me to go online and read the manual. Going online, I found that some of these watches require one or more intermediate steps to use the chrono or alarm functions. I'm fairly allergic to what I consider poor UI design, and these kinds of things bug me. That led me earlier to shift to classic divers, because they were so clean and simple, and you can tell elapsed time against the unidirectional bezel. But now I find myself wishing I had an actual chrono seconds hand. So, I'm ranting and rambling, which I tend to do which I'm looking at pictures of watches and not sleeping. But I'm starting to wonder if I really need an E6B. I'll have to sleep on it. Maybe the Orient will be the best compromise. Or maybe I'll end up going in another direction:



That's from perpetual-watch.com

[TickTockMan]

Or even (nice pic from BlueDial)...


Features: simple-to-use chrono with mechanical feel (in fact, mechanically actuated), alarm (easy enough to use that I'd use it, although it's not terribly precise or loud), never needing to change batteries, and 200m water resistance. No computations, though... Hmmm.

[mephisto]

But I'm starting to wonder if I really need an E6B. I'll have to sleep on it...

not really.... and if you need to do calculations it's probably a better idea to have one of these in your shirt pocket rather than trusting your life to calculations based off of a watch bezel with dubious markings