Peter wrote:
They recommend a “service” (£300 for the Fortis) every 5 years. I wonder how many people actually do this?
That is expensive. I pay only a little more for a Jaeger.
Generally , I agree with the need for service and on return from the service the watch winds much easier than before.
Note: it is not the official Jaeger service – that would be roughly twice the amount – but a professional watchmaker with a slightly lower hourly rate than yours ;-)
A funny little postscript below – just got this today. As you can see this company works really fast.
Their Fortis watches must run backwards 
Evidently I should have bought a Breitling which has the same ETA7750 internals but at least I would look like a real pilot so hey it must be worth the money 
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Here’s a Q for watch connoisseurs:
How much of a rough treatment would a standard ETA-movement automatic watch be expected to withstand?
I have one ETA7750 based Fortis (mentioned in the post above) which over 4 years, and bought secondhand then, has withstood a huge amount of banging and abuse and just keeps going… losing a steady 15-20 seconds a day like it always did.
I also briefly had another one with an IWC modified ETA7750 movement that would latch itself into a funny mode where it gained 3-4 seconds per minute (you’ve read that right) for some hours, after just doing some skiing (not falling off or anything like that) and then magically fix itself after some 10-20 hours, but changing its accuracy from its normal 3-4 secs per day to ~20 secs per day. The shop it came from (secondhand) is getting pi$$y about paying for a proper service but luckily I got a video of it when it was doing it. I don’t see why the IWC version of the ETA should be so flimsy, especially as this isn’t a ladies’ dress watch
10€, 7 years battery time, beat that!
It has, however, a small drawback: https://gizmodo.com/5795554/people-wearing-this-casio-watch-might-be-terrorists
The reason I replace Casios is that I can’t get a replacement strap at an economic price relative to replacement considering the age of the watch. The cases get marked, the face scratched, but only once have I had a reliability problem.
here is my tritium teaser worn regularly self winding
even has my bucker emblem in it
pretty though only 200 or so produced 
Traser are nice. The tritium illumination works vastly better than the luminescent paint. I still have one – a RONDA movement like many quartz watches. I moved to self winding after a battery went flat when I was on a trip somewhere. And nobody ever made a self winding stopwatch version AFAIK.
Flyer59 wrote:
The one and only … for me ;-)
Me too. The hi-story behind the watch is fascinating. Where is Aldrin‘s mooneatch ;) ?
Also simple no bling bling and good value for a solid watch (especially the basic NASA certified version). Mine is 33 years old, works great.
Bought a new one when my son was born to give to him when he’s an adult. Will have to buy one more this year ;). Thankfully Omega‘s msrp are nowhere near required to be paid.
You would never think a pricey brand would do this
It took several goes by a “trade watchmaker” (read: somebody a lot cheaper than IWC, i.e. just about anybody) to fix it. Without the video evidence, the secondhand shop it came from would have refused to do it, but luckily I managed to get two of those videos. The watchmaker could never reproduce it though. Initially he said the spring was too strong, causing a sort of double tap of the pendulum, and he said this is a really common issue with Breitlings which use the same ETA7750 movement as this one (and same as most self winding watches over about 500 quid) except that Breitling specify a stronger spring and that creates problems. But that didn’t fix it; the problem came back a few months later. Eventually the guy replaced something called a barrel, and it’s been ok since.
He did fix it really well; it runs to a fraction of a second per day which is astounding for a mechanical watch. The IWC spec is 7 seconds per day.
The last laugh goes to this watch which my grandfather gave me when I was 10 (1967) and which is still within the spec of the ETA7750-based Fortis mentioned above
