Submariner & Accuracy

[Brian Page]

Originally Posted by ltmgeller

Great pic of a great watch.

Thank you Sir!

[MovieGuy]

Originally Posted by drakulie

When they received it, they did their testes in front of me, and it's running perfect..

Now I've heard of every way to make a watch run more accurately!!

[regnant]

Chronometric precision as the owner manual states

[padi56]

Originally Posted by landroverking

I have a chrono with seagull movement. Paid 99$ for it

Keeps really good time.

Well IMHO they are great movements the Seagull ST19 manual wind chronograph is based on the old Swiss Venus cal 175.The Chinese bought up the Venus movement tooling rights many many years ago,when the Swiss watch industry was in a state of collapse back in the late 1960s early 1970s.This was down to mainly the onslaught of the Japanese quartz watches and many of the old Swiss movement manufactures were going bust.This why we have ETA today many just had to amalgamate into one business or go bust like many did at this time.Now the Chinese did mod the Venus base movement to give it a higher beat rate plus a longer power reserve its quite amazing how accurate they are.But on the down side they do need to be re-regulate every year or so if you want high anal WIS type accuracy.


The main reason I bought this Alpha watch off flea-bay was mainly for the movement.As I said the movement appeared to be a very much like the Swiss Venus 175. Its a 40mm watch movement 17 jewel manual wind chronograph with quite well finished Incabloc type protection,running at 21,600 BPH,and the Crystal was good quality Acrylic and over-all weight 140 grams power reserve is 42 hours on a full manual wind.


Now lets talk about quality, over-all I was quite impressed with the quality for $60 watch plus $15 for postage.The dial is very crisp even under a 10x loupe,the fonts are very sharp and crisp.The watch comes on a solid link oyster style bracelet with screwed in links.That is very well finished and even lock-tight on the screws.And the case is well polished to a high mirror finish,and all the brushed work is nice and crisp, all the edges are sharp and clean.


Now the movement itself is a Column Wheel chronograph, and nicely decorated with blued screws, pearlage and Geneva stripes,(Hong Kong stripes).All the levers have been polished to a high luster and show little signs of any roughness under 15x loupe,plates and bridges seem to be plated.The gears are brass and have a high smooth finish. I would have expected to see a cheap plastic spacer ring holding the movement in place.But I was totally shocked to see the more traditional case clamps used, like on very much higher priced watches.


Now off to my watchmaker friend and his timing machine,this will sort the men out from the boys.Well the first position we timed was dial up.The graphs banking was pretty well even, and showing + 5.07 seconds per day. Now this is a very good sign, we only ran 100 beats for each run since after 100, the principle of cancelled returns starts to take effect.Next position was logically the dial down position. Notice now that the balance is running very slightly erratic and showing + 8.01 seconds per day .Now crown up, probably the least important position showing + 7.25 seconds daily, and a very even clean graph.Now the most important position crown down, now in this position gravity has it's greatest effect on the balance wheel.I would expect it to speed up a bit,in this position graph shows + 10.21 seconds daily,with a perfect strait line graph,this is excellent considering price of watch.


Overall it was running at just over Chronometer spec at + 7.65 seconds daily,with excellent isochronous.So out of the box its been tested and running very close to COSC specs.Now new watches tend to run a bit fast till the oil circulates around all the moving parts.But all the tests we performed portrayed this movement could quite easily be tuned to run well within COSC specs.And after a week of wearing has settled down to + 5 to + 8 seconds daily,very good for a $65 watch.But after a month and it bit more tweaking got it down to a consistant +4 seconds a day.
__________________

[drakulie]

Originally Posted by directioneng

Which server are you using for your sync and what is your method for time checking?

Time.gov

I check in the morning when I wake, at end of day at work, and then when I go to bed.

When I wake, it hasn't gained or lost any time.
When I finish work it has gained so far this week, 22, 14, and 16 seconds respectively.

When I go to bed it hasn't gained/lost any time since finishing work.

[Racerdj]

Congratulations on a great selection. Your accuracy is outstanding and I hope it continues. It was accurately regulated. Mine are all within the COSC allowable standards.