Jean-Michel posts Omega Museum visit Snaps:

I just received this email from Jean-Michel (owner of: Lemania5100.net, Navitimer.net, & speedmaster-mission.net): Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 22:37:18 +0100 (CET) From: jean-michel Reply-To: jean_michel@navitimer.net Subject: a visit to the Omega museum To: ...snip...   My dear friends I am just back from a visit to the Omega museum in Bienne Switzerland I have just put the pictures of this trip on my speedmaster website at http://www.speedmaster-mission.net[then click on the "museum" button if that link doesn't take you directly to the Museum page -- C]. I hope you'll enjoy the pictures ! cheers JM Take a visit and send thanks to JM for thinking of us! This is almost like visiting ourselves! -- Chuck

Interesting new (to me anyway) Swiss Army 7750's...

I just spied some interesting new models on the Swiss Army website: 24159 24162 NEW chronopro (Models 24159 & 24162 Above) mechanical: self-winding price in USD: $1,195.00 price in Canadian: $1,395.00 Mechanical self-winding movement Anti-reflection sapphire crystal Water resistant to 10 ATM - 100 M - 330 Ft Steel case Luminous hands and hour markers Screw-in caseback See through caseback Screw down crown Screw down pushers Date Chronograph Tackymeter timer Steel bracelet Double locking safety clasp Push button deployment clasp Push button deployment clasp 24160 For 24160 Model above: NEW chronopro mechanical: self-winding price in USD: $1,095.00 price in Canadian: $1,295.00 size:large Mechanical self-winding movement Anti-reflection sapphire crystal Water resistant to 10 ATM - 100 M - 330 Ft Steel case Luminous hands and hour markers Screw-in caseback See through caseback Screw down crown Screw down pushers Date Chronograph Tackymeter timer Push-button deployant buckle Leather strap I highlighted some of the features on each description I thought notable... Very VERY few firms have screwdown pushers on their chronographs: Rolex, Tudor and Fortis are three I can name off the top of my head. Swiss Army has these on a very affordable watch. Some people find these annoying, I find them potentially useful, and it gives you something additional to fiddle with on your chronograph... Double locking safety clasp and push button deployment clasp on the bracelet model's are pretty significant for a "lower-end" chronograph as is a push-button deployant buckle on the Strap model. Note that there is a bit of a gap in the model numbers, so there might be some additional models not pictured on the Swiss Army website, perhaps a black dial bracelet model... It's nice to see some firms selling quality mechanical/automatic chronographs at or around the $1,000 US pricing point. I'd be proud to wear any of these on my wrist, especially the white dial model. The black dial bracelet model might cause some indigestion over at TAG-Heuer where there new Carrera sports a similar look... Don't you think? -- Chuck

In holiday mode here for the next couple of days...

Sorry I haven't been posting more often...

I've begun my holiday mode here yesterday when I spent most of the day doing some last minute christmas shopping (and dealing with an annoying printer problem - Thank goodness for Apple Airport Express's USB Sharing feature). Today I'll be wraping presents and picking up materials for Christmas eating for a good part of the day, tomorrow I'll be distributing Christmas gifts for a good chunk of the day... And frankly, everyone else seems to be doing much of the same it seems because there isn't a lot going on in the watch world. I mean I know a gent DF is going to be trying to verify the movement and authenticity of (he hopes) a pre-moon c.321 today in Chicago, and a dutch gent was looking for pointers on submitting an information request with Omega Vintage information, but I haven't seen much else going on. It's been very quiet. And that's a good thing.

So go out there and make some news! So I'll have something to talk about!

Have a great week/holiday and I keep pluggin' along!

-- Chuck

Posted a slide show of my Gallet Collection...

Tuesday is traditionally my day to take pictures and scan in documentation. Since there have been requests for the past week (past couple of months to be honest) for me to take/post pictures of my Gallet's, today I took the time to take about 100 pictures of them & I spent most of the day whittle-ing them down to about 24 that I have placed on a page, complete with slide show on my .mac account. You can access this page via this link... If there is any interest, I'll work on posting a couple of pages with a running dialog of the pictures on my webpage. Take a gander and post some commentary! Enjoy! Chuck

RJ & Gerard work to revive www.Speedmaster.nl

This morning early I received an email from fellow collector, bloger, moderator and all-round good bloke Robert-Jan Broer that he and Gerard have been proceeding apace in updating and reviving the www.speedmaster.nl site. RJ and G have just added a Speedmaster only forum over there and even though it's only in the testing phase, they'd welcome people who didn't mind a little sawdust on the floor as it were. The old speedmaster.nl site was a very nice place to visit if one was interested in learning about Speedmasters, as with many things in this busy world, the principals became busy doing other things and the site had been a little bit on the static side (sort of like my blog will be during the holidays!). In any case it's well worth the visit and may turn out to be the next big thing. Why not make a visit and see what's happening? Enjoy! Chuck

Some Sinn-ful reading for Christmas week...

Follow this link to download a 145 page Adobe Acrobat .pdf of the 2004 Sinn Catalog. Or as we call it in the Chronograph Collecting crowd... The Wish Book. Just the thing to have on your laptop for some light enjoyable reading this week. -- Chuck

Christopher Meisenzahl Points out RolexSamler.dk

Christopher Meisenzahl, fellow TZ Omega Forum regular and my favorite NASA web site skelunker, pointed out this very interesting Danish website, RolexSamler.dk featuring Omega and Rolex (mainly Rolex)... Some interesting pictures, they've managed to glom onto Steve Waddington's reproduction of Omega's "Space Story" brochure, but the site includes many instruction manuals for Rolex wrist watches, which is very cool! Thanks Chris for pointing out this site! -- Chuck

New (to me) Site dedicated to the Sinn Space One (142):

From my "Things I stumble across while searching for other things" department... I bring this nifty site dedicated to the Sinn 142 (a.k.a. Sinn Space One) and related Sinn, and other brand, chronographs... Since these folks have borrowed one of my photo's without attribution, so I think I'll risk not posting my standard disclaimer for the image above and the one below... It's a very interesting and useful site. I learned that my 5-center pinion Lemania 134x based Sinn is a model 140 and the Sinn143.jpg is nigh identical to my Mistral Timing 5012 and perhaps Sinn is the OEM of the Mistral... Interesting oddities abound in the Picture Gallery including this 5-center pinion Lemania 5100 with arabic hour markings (standard on the 144 GMT, but unusual for a Space One/142) & a second SST (the white one) hand set back 10 minutes from the primary Red/Orange hand reportedly used to track Helicopter turbine idle time... (I don't know...) In any instance, this site is well worth the visit to fans of Sinn or simply this style of chronograph watch... -- C