I currently have a Traser tritium-illuminated watch which glows brightly in the dark, but most watches don’t have that, and particularly most watches marketed “for pilots”.
I have just come across this thread which suggests that Fortis in particular (a €2000 watch sold in various pilot shops) is completely unreadable after 2 hours in darkness.
Very recently I bought a watch (a standard Swiss movement, like 99% of watches are, but nice outside) which was completely unreadable in the dark at any time. The luminous paint was evidently completely useless. I sent it back because I do actually need to tell the time in the dark, normally.
An enquiry to Fortis draws a deliberately useless reply saying that if you want to see it in the dark you should buy a tritium watch. Another distributor of loads of watches says the same; they say the Fortis is as good as IWC (up to €10000 but exactly the same Swiss movement inside) when it comes to the luminous paint. How can they sell a €xxxx “pilot” watch with a straight face (no pun intended)?
However I wonder if the tests in the above link were done with a properly adjusted night vision which takes about 10-20 mins.
OTOH, the cockpit is not completely dark at night. You have the whole panel illuminated and you have enough light from overhead lights to read the kneeboard. However that light is not enough to “recharge” any luminous paint, so the readability of the watch is an interesting question.
I wonder if anyone can report on their findings.
Don’t you have a mobile phone that can display the time?
Watches in 2014 are jewellery, their original function has been largely replaced by mobile phones. More people carry mobile phones than watches today.
Do you want jewelry or a tool ?
Garmin’s D2 Does-It-All Pilot Watch:
Might be an idea to actually read my post, chaps 
I think your mistake is that you try to assume certain technical properties from it being a “pilot watch” where it is just a pilot watch like ray bans are pilot sunglasses. It’s just about making an impression… Best combined with fitting clothes, like the Italian Airforce brand which a friend of mine wears exclusively.
Best combined with fitting clothes, like the Italian Airforce brand which a friend of mine wears exclusively.
I’d understand RAF or USAF or even Finnish Airforce clothing (after all, they gave the Russians a hard time in WW2).
But Italian Airforce clothing? That’s like wearing a Costa Concordia shirt when going sailing 
…
Hello Peter!
Over the years I have tried almost everything in this respect. More out of curiosity than for need of a watch. As others have said, in the 21st century a watch is not really something one needs, not even as pilot. When I go flying, I rarely bother to wear a watch at all, especially after I broke the glass of a rather expensive one, for my limited budget at least, while loading passenger baggage into the cargo hold (how can you tell a Citation pilot? From the cuts and bruises on his hands and forearms and bloodstains on his shirtsleeves that are inevitably caused by the sharp edges of the cargo compartments…)
So from my experience, same as you say, the only “naturally” constantly bright watches are those with GTLS (gaseous trttium light source) illumination. Like Traser and similar brands, which are usually really cheap watches with Ronda (= Swatch) movements and plastic cases and rubber bracelets. The half life of Tritium is about 10 years, so after some time one notices that it is not as bright as it used to be. Mine is now six or seven years old and it already needs a real dark night to see it glow… But GTLS light sources can be bought from fishing tackle suppliers as well because they are used for night-time fishing. They come in many sizes and colours and can be used to illuminate almost everything. As I am generally fascinated by things that glow in the dark (and physical phenomena in general) I have bought several of these “betalights” for various purposes. In some countries, one can even buy GTLS “torches” and map reading lights, but unfortunately not in my country because they contain too much radioactive tritium.
Regarding the Fortis watches: These use “superluminova” for night readibility like 99 percent of all watches that glow in the dark (the remaining percent has tritium based paint that is similar to the GTLS lights but only found on very expensive watches which need to have their hands and dials repainted every 5 to 10 years). Superluminova glows very bright initially but as you write, not much is left after two hours at best. There are no exceptions and no miracles, whatever the sales brochures write, because physics and chemistry are the same for everybody in this universe. I also have a simple Fortis watch (no stopwatch function) which is nice to look at, but not good for long night flights with total electrical failure and no flashlights on board
Then there are some divers watches (Citizen and similar) that have their whole dial covered in glowing compound (usually superluminova) and which glow extremely bright initially, but again only for a couple of hours. This is sufficient for a recreational diver because his air supply usually lasts less than an hour anyway.
Remain the electrically lit watches which beat everything else by a wide margin. The only disadvantage is the fact that one briefly needs both hands to get them glowing in the dark. Digital LED watches that were state-of-the-art in the mid to late seventies have become fashionable again, as well as “binary” watches which are rather design objects and items of jewelry rather than timepieces. Inexpensive, precise, reliable and long living are Swatches of the “Loomi” kind. My personal favorite for an electronic glow-in the dark watch is the iPod nano of the sixth series. They are square, about five centimeters big and came with a watch “app” as standard with several styles of dial to choose from, old fashioned, modern and even nixie-tube digital readout. There were/are numerous bracelets of all kind available with which they can be worn as a watch. If one only uses it as a watch and not for listening to music, the battery lasts a month between recharges (via USB). Unfortunately they are not built any more and good ones are now more expensive to buy than when they were made.
This is what an “iPod nano watch” looks like (if I remove the blue protective case it would look nicer of course, but not for long):
At the risk of thread drift, but on a subject many pilots seem to like, IWC watches are not all powered by ETA movements some are of in house manufacture. I have one like this:
http://www.blowers-jewellers.co.uk/steel_iwc_portugueser_fa_jones_iw544203.htm
and it’s definitely not an ETA movement, but the hands are not luminous at all
A simple solution might be a keyring UV torch – I have one of the tiny sub-two-quid variety and discovered its watch illuminating powers by chance! They’re not much more than a watch battery and a UV LED.
Hello Peter,
I reply to your mail in public because it might be of interest to some other watch afficionados
And sorry for the late reply, I have been away for four days in a row, including two layover days at Zadar, not the worst place to spend “paid holidays” :-) I even attended a concert there of “Seve nacionale” or Severina Vuckovic, one of the most famous pop singers in Croatia and all over the Balkans. Great show, wonderful atmosphere on the seashore under the stars and about the most wonderful audience I have ever encountered in such a concert – they knew every word of every song and sometimes the artist would let the audience sing an entire song alone (which were her only breaks during almost three hours of uniterrupted performance that lasted until two in the morning). I’ve been to quite a few expensive shows of world stars who would barely perform for an hour… If only she would sing a few songs in English or Italian she could extend her popularity all over Europe.
But back on topic: I did a little research regarding the possible complaints you mention because – like most pilots – I am also interested in everything that is watch related and also have a modest little collection – but nothing really expensive as my budget for toys is very limited.
At least here in Germany, in order to complain, there must be some kind of norm or standard that must be satisfied. If not, you can not legally complain. As it looks, there is only one such norm: ISO 3157 “Radioluminescence for time measurement instruments — Specification” (http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=8330). Unfortunately ISO charges 38 Swiss Franks for downloading the full text. But anyway, it only applies to radioactively lit watch dials such as tritium compounds, tritium gas light sources and the (now rare or even nonexisting radium and promethium based lighting). For non-radioactive watch dials there seems to be no norm or regulation, ergo no possible complaints.
In a German watch forum I found a good reply to a similar question by a representative of the German manufacturer “Sinn” (http://www.sinn-uhrenforum.de/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=2698). In essence, he writes that the usual “Superluminova” dials are brighter than tritium lights (which must satisfy the ISO norm of 36 nano Candela (nCd) per square millimerer for dials and 10nCd for pointers) for about two hours and thereafter drop to 7nCd within 6 hours, the threshold for the dark-adapted human eye being 3.2nCd.
Some of my better watches are stored in a watch box with a glass lid in my bedroom. When I go to bed several hours after sunset without turning on the light, I usually only see the tritium lighted Traser watch glowing. Only when looking very closely the other dials are faintly visible which corresponds well with the answer given in the link above. By some strange coinicidence, my second brightest – or long-glowing – watch is a fake, or “replica” as we are on a public forum, divers watch of a well known Swiss brand (the same that supplied the watches for the Apollo mission) which I once bought at the bazar at Istanbul. I have no idea what the Chinese who made this thing use for lighting. But what they were not able to do is waterproofing this would-be diver’s watch ;-)
One more technique for watch illumination that I have come across is “Indiglo” patented by Timex. But this is electrically powered and requires the press of a button in order to turn on the electroluminescent dial. I don’t have such a watch so can’t comment on the brightness, but I think it must be similar to the older Garmin handheld GPS units (like the Garmin 92 that I still have in some drawer) which use a similar technology. Quite power consuming for a tiny watch battery I suppose.
Regards
Max
Zadar on departure (the airport LDZD already out of sight behind). On the way in I couldn’t take pictures because I was busy doing my visual approach between some large buildups:
And here, Severina at work in the middle of the night. The concert was sold out, so I sneaked in together with some local youths (used to do that when I was their age and have not lost the skill yet ) under the fence and found a good viewing place between some bushes in an embankment right next to the stage – business aviators are used to improvise …
