Category: Sport Watch

Up Close With The Longines Heritage Military COSD

Post author By ukwatches
Post date July 15, 2016

Longines has been a Value Proposition favorite for very good reasons: thanks to their history, they have a pretty fantastic repertoire of great designs and historically important replica watches on which to draw, and the Heritage Longines replica watches are such an inexhaustible supply of great looking, reasonably priced vintage replica watches that I’ve often been tempted to just do the whole collection in one go and save you the trouble of reading a dozen different stories. However, sometimes a replica watch really is worth a stand-alone look-see, and the Heritage Military COSD is one of them.Baume Mercier Replica

In this particular example the movement is suspended in the case in what looks like the shock-absorbing cushion some sources mention as being characteristic of the COSD and its use by paratroopers, and the case has fixed spring bars. They’re a fascinating slice of military history and as you might expect, the folks over at the Military Replica Watch Forum have on several occasions gone very deep indeed into this replica watch; here’s a good place to start.

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Combined Operations in the UK during World War II referred in general to multi-service-branch operations, and more specifically, to operations undertaken by Commando units, which had been formed in the wake of the disastrous rout of the French and British armies in France. In Winston Churchill’s words, they were to be “ . . . specially trained troops of the hunter class who can develop a reign of terror down the enemy coast.” For our purposes, it’s interesting to note that the barrel of the De Lisle carbine is also marked COSD and it’s been suggested that it may actually stand for “Combined Operations Stores Division” or “Depot” – exactly the sort of fine, research-intensive, hard-to-establish point that makes vintage replica watch collecting so potentially interesting.

The short version of the story is that the Military COSD is based on a replica watch issued to the British military – in particular, paratroopers – during the Second World War. As such it looks to have been a very, very straightforward timepiece, designed for two objectives: economy, and sturdiness. According to auction notes from a September auction at Replica Watches of Knightsbridge in the UK, casing material was steel and nickel plate, and COSD is supposed to have stood for “Company Ordnance Supply Depot.” The movement is Longines caliber 12.68N, a gilt-finished caliber that’s rather plain in appearance but also gives the impression of the very high functional quality for which Longines was known.

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Now, one intriguing open question is whether or not COSD actually stands for Company Ordnance Supply Depot. It seems a reasonable assertion and Longines itself says that’s what it stands for, but some detective work by the folks at MWF leads to another piece of military hardware that carries the same initials: a rather fiendish weapon made for British Commando units, designed for silent killing. This is the (in)famous De Lisle Commando Carbine. The De Lisle carbine was one of the quietest weapons ever made; it had an integrated silencer (basically, the gun looks like a giant silencer the size of two tennis ball cans taped together – more properly called a suppressor – with a stock and receiver added as an afterthought) and fired a .45 caliber subsonic round. It was bolt-action only (a semi-automatic firearm is inherently noisier, due to the sound made when the action cycles) and was very much a covert/special operations weapon.

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De Lisle Carbine (image by Atirador from Wikipedia).

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On the dial is the Broad Arrow mark, which indicates British government property – this, too, has some interesting history behind it. The Broad Arrow was first used by the Office of Ordnance, which was created by King Henry VIII; it’s thought to have been introduced by Sir Philip Sydney, in whose family coat of arms the pheon, or heraldic broad arrow, can be found, in around 1585.

Whatever it may stand for, certainly the replica watches are classic examples of military hardware: almost brutally straightforward in general, and the originals were built to be as accurate and durable as they could be, with absolutely nothing inessential to get between them and the mission. The originals all appear to have been white dialed (at least, I haven’t seen any vintage black dial examples) and those that survived the War occasionally had their cases swapped out for nicer ones by their presumably grateful owners.

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The re-issue we have has a black dial, and other than the movement, the main departure from the original is the presence of a date guichet. If you are the sort of person roused to indignation by that sort of thing you already know it; I’m not personally terribly fundamentalist about a date window, but it’s a deal-breaker for some. Another departure from the original is the use of conventional spring bars rather than the solid, soldered bars in the wartime COSD replica watches; I actually would have loved to see fixed bars on the re-issue but this is another situation where strict fidelity to the original would probably have made the replica watch a bit harder to sell.

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Now, this is supposed to be a Week On The Wrist, so what’s with all the background information? Well, sometimes a huge chunk of the fun in a replica watch is the back-story, and that’s the situation here. It’s a very comfortable, very easy replica watch to wear, but taken alone, with only the background of other modern replica watches, it’s pretty plain-Jane. However, if you understand what’s behind a lot of the design cues, you really do feel, when you put it on, the pull of history that makes wearing a mechanical replica watch interesting. When we got this in from Longines it seemed pretty unremarkable to me, I’ll be honest, but knowing more about the original from which the re-issue is derived is where the pleasure is, and makes you see it in a different light – and it’s a reminder that the most interesting replica watches are usually those that have a story to tell.

The original COSD replica watches I’ve seen all show all the marks you’d expect of heavy use, and the re-issue we have here is unlike them in one pretty noticeable respect: it’s very highly polished. That’s one way among many that I suppose replica watches intended for covert military operations have changed over the years; something that reflective probably would not fit the bill for today’s special/covert operators (who from what I’ve seen tend to – understandably – favor things like G-Shocks anyway). The high reflectivity of the finish might be a sticking point for some, but consider it another link back to a different time and a particular period in the evolution of special forces units, and their equipment.

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The Longines Heritage Military COSD is available from Longines online here; price, $1,700. 40 mm stainless-steel case; sapphire crystal with antireflective coating. Automatic movement, NATO type military strap; available with either opaline/white or black dial. Water resistance 30 meters/100 feet.

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Tags Longines Heritage Military COSD

Blancpain Replica Hands-on Men Watch Sport Watch

Reviewing The Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe In Sedna Gold

Post author By ukwatches
Post date June 28, 2016

The Bathyscaphe’s styling is significantly different from earlier Fifty Fathoms models, and the movement is the very modern caliber 1315, a fast-beat, long-power-reserve engine specifically introduced by Blancpain in 2008 to provide the brand with a performance oriented in-house sports replica watch caliber. In 2015, Blancpain released a new, Sedna Gold version of the Bathyscaphe – and we just spent a Week On The Wrist with the most contemporary and one of the most quietly luxurious Fifty Fathoms models ever made.www.faussefr.com

The Fifty Fathoms replica watch has been around since 1953, and for its 60th anniversary in 2013, a thoroughly updated version was created: the Bathyscaphe, which takes its name from the undersea exploration vehicle invented by Jacques Piccard.

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I really wasn’t sure how to feel about the Bathyscaphe at first. In the context of the Fifty Fathoms line, it’s a big departure both in size and in style from the historical Fifty Fathoms timepieces. There are four basic models in current production – the Bathyscaphe; what I suppose you could call the “original” Fifty Fathoms; the highly technical X-Fathoms; and the 500 Fathoms GMT, which is water resistant to 1,000 meters and is being produced in a limited series of 500 replica watches.

The Bathyscaphe, on the other hand, is a 43 mm replica watch, takes a 23 mm strap, and is 13 mm thick. By the numbers, it’s right at the edge of what I’d consider a wristwatch you can wear on a day-to-day basis, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that, the use of Sedna gold for the case notwithstanding, it didn’t feel excessively large; it was actually immediately comfortable. This was partly thanks to the excellent nylon strap and beautifully made folding buckle; the latter is also in Sedna gold, and what in steel is a great piece of machinery becomes, in gold, almost opulent.

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Sedna gold is interesting stuff to look at every day. There have been some interesting experiments with gold alloys going on from different brands in recent years; sintered gold/ceramics from Hublot, Lange’s Honey Gold, and so on. Sedna gold was introduced for the first time in the Swatch Group by Omega, for the Constellation Sedna, in 2013, and it’s a combination of gold, copper, and palladium. Palladium is a platinum group metal and it does the same thing in Sedna gold that platinum does in Rolex’s Everose: prevents the characteristic tarnishing that can occur due to the presence of copper. Technically speaking, Sedna gold is an 18k rose gold and a very sensible choice for a dive replica watch, especially as contact with water can hasten the discoloration. Sedna, as readers who are astronomy buffs might know, is the name of a very distant minor or dwarf planet (about 31 times farther out than Neptune), but it’s also the name, in Inuit mythology, for a goddess of the sea, which is pretty appropriate for a dive replica watch.

The original style Fifty Fathoms is now a 45 mm replica watch – I miss very much having a smaller version of the FF in steel available; the 50th Anniversary model from 2003, with a sapphire bezel and a 40 mm case, was extraordinarily beautiful and very wearable and I have been wishing, with an increasing sense of futility, for it to return as a regular production model for many years.

I’m curious about the percentage of palladium and copper, because although the redness of copper is definitely there, Sedna gold seems a bit paler to me than conventional rose or red-gold alloys and depending on how the light’s reflected, it can range in color from a pale pink to almost white. It’s a beautiful effect, and it keeps the replica watch from seeming too overtly ostentatious; technical replica watches in precious metals can seem overdressed if you’re not careful, and the coloration of Sedna gold allows the Bathyscaphe to keep its technical character.

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The movement, as we’ve already mentioned, is the caliber 1315 and fittingly, for what is after all a technical replica watch, it’s dressed for work, not the opera. That said, it’s a well-finished piece of machinery. It also, by the way, turned in an excellent performance over the week I wore the replica watch. There was absolutely no detectable daily variation in rate whatsoever – I mean, none. I am reasonably sure that it gained about a half second after a week, but to be honest, to really evaluate the performance of this particular sample I’d have needed to put the replica watch on a timing machine. If Blancpain’s caliber 1315 is controlled at the factory so that this performance is consistent across its production, that’s a pretty laudable accomplishment (certainly, it makes the absence of COSC certification a non-issue).

The bezel has a ceramic insert – again, from a practicality standpoint this is an excellent choice, especially for salt water immersion. As you’d expect from what, its surprisingly discreet demeanor notwithstanding, is definitely a luxury dive replica watch, operating the bezel is both smooth and precise; there’s just enough resistance to give you tactile feedback as to bezel position, and marker positioning is spot on. Blancpain really nailed the haptics of bezel operation very well in the Bathyscaphe.

One of the things I’ve always wondered about with the Bathyscaphe is what impression you’d have of the dial proportions over time. Ever since the first time I’d seen it, I thought the dial seemed a little empty – as if too few elements were being dispersed over too large a space. This is really an aesthetic issue, not a practical one – the Bathyscaphe is legibility personified, as a matter of fact. The bezel also seemed a bit narrow at first sight as well. However, over the week I wore it, it started to seem more an advantage than not – the effect is actually rather restful and, in any case, Blancpain has a long history of effective use of negative space and I came to feel that the sparseness of the dial was a big part of what gave the replica watch its character.

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Overall, the Bathyscaphe Sedna Gold was a very pleasant surprise on a number of levels – aesthetics and wearability for one, and pretty phenomenal (if anecdotal) performance chronometrically as well; whoever gets one is going to have a very intelligently design wristwatch that will both serve its technical purpose well and look very unostentatiously handsome doing it. This is a replica watch that flew a bit under my radar when Blancpain introduced it and having it for A Week On The Wrist was a pleasure – and a chance to experience a design and technical success from Blancpain I might have otherwise missed.

See the entire Fifty Fathoms collection right here.

The Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe in Sedna Gold: case, 43 mm x 13.4 mm, 30 bar/300 meter water resistant. Movement, Blancpain in-house caliber 1315, 120-hour power reserve, 28,800 vph, running in 35 jewels; antimagnetic with silicon balance spring. Price as shown, $25,200; currently available.

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Tags Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe

Hands-on MBF Replica Sport Watch Technical Watch

MBF Presents LM1Silberstein

Post author By ukwatches
Post date June 27, 2016

Once inside the meeting room we saw today’s replica watches, which are not only the latest Performance Art pieces to be launched by MB&F, but also their second partnership with Silberstein.

Known for his primary colour dominated playful replica watches of his eponymous brand, which ceased in 2012, you may be familiar with his 2009 MB&F Performance Art collaboration, called the HM2 Black Box.

The Legacy Machine series, whilst commencing with more conservatively styled aesthetics, has grown into a horological playground for partnership, notably with Xia Hang with his endearing Mr Up/ Mr Down, and now with Silberstein and the LM1.

So I was at Baselworld 2016 waiting for my appointment when I noticed a familiar looking person. I stood there wracking my brains, trying to match a name. Then I glanced down at his wrist.

It was Mr. Alain Silberstein, of course.

The dual time zone and vertical power reserve indicator are where Silberstein has left his mark, with the use of the red, yellow and blue trio he is known for, and the triangle, square and circle, all shapes which are prominent features of his own replica watches. However, you will also note that the bridge is sapphire, which not only adds an interesting visual contrast from a material point of view, but also grants an unobstructed view of the balance wheel.

Powering it all is of course the now familiar manual-wind movement developed for MB&F by Jean-François Mojon/ Chronode and Kari Voutilainen with its (newly styled) 14mm balance wheel floating high above the movement and two dials.

Another thing you will notice is that the sub dials are now concave, making them look like small metal bowls, almost.

The first MB&F Alain Silberstein collaboration is very difficult to track down. Even then, there is little getting around the fact that it’s a replica watch of proportions that don’t suit every wrist. This new threesome in rather more ‘user friendly’ proportions now gives a new opportunity for fans of the first, Silberstein fans, and MB&F fans, to scratch their ‘watch itch’.

Each of the three versions of this new Legay Machine are in a 42.5mm case with a thickness of 17mm. This is in contrast to the original LM1, whose measurements are 44mm and 16mm high.

Engraved in French between the lugs of LM1 Silberstein is something special to him : “Le vrai bonheur est d’avoir sa passion pour métier” (“Making a profession of your passion is true happiness”).

This new LM1 Silberstein timepiece comes in three variants with a limitation of twelve pieces per model as per below :

Grade 5 titanium (79,000 CHF + VAT)
Grade 5 titanium treated with black PVD (79,000 CHF + VAT)
18 carat red gold (88,000 CHF + VAT)

Strap-wise, you will get a black hand-stitched calfskin strap with black top-stitched seams with the red gold model and straps with red top-stitched seams for both titanium case models.

Tags Baselworld 2016, Hands-on, Limited Editions, MBF, Switzerland, Watch Profile, watches

Glycine Replica Hands-on Men Watch Sport Watch

Hands-on With Glycine Airman No. 1

Post author By ukwatches
Post date June 6, 2016

“During most of my journey from Bangkok to Calcutta, I was seated at the place of the First Officer, next to the commander in a DC-4 from Thai Airways. The captain explained to me in detail what kind of replica watch pilots from all nations would actually need. According to him this replica watch is not on the market.”replica orologi breitling

Those words were penned in 1953 by Samuel Glur, a traveling executive with the Altus-Glycine replica watch company of Biel, Switzerland. His letter went on to list the requirements for the perfect pilot’s replica watch for the new era of intercontinental commercial air travel. The replica watch would be able to track two time zones on a 24-hour scale, giving a pilot access to both his local time as well as a GMT reference, important since GMT is the time standard referred to by air traffic control no matter where a plane is in the world.

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Despite its niche appeal, Glycine has never really stopped producing the Airman since 1953, though some of the quartz editions of the late 1980s are regrettable. The replica watch has gone through dozens of versions, from the utilitarian to the downright bizarre, but in 2014, Glycine came full circle when it released the Airman No. 1, a re-issue of that very first edition of the 1950s. When one arrived for review, I had to double check that Glycine had actually sent the Airman No. 1 and not the actual Airman number 1. It is that faithful a reproduction.

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The replica watch market these days is so rife with vintage-styled “heritage” pieces, it’s easy to get jaded by them and nitpick the details that have been sacrificed to suit modern tastes. The most obvious specification that is updated is the size. Mid-century replica watches were often 36 mm or smaller – undersized for the modern buyer used to bigger pieces. But the Airman No. 1 clocks in at precisely 36 mm, the exact dimension of the original replica watch it emulates.

The resulting replica watch, the fittingly named Glycine Airman, debuted only months later, first presented in the U.S. with a white dial and pencil hands. But it was at the 1955 Basel Replica Watch Fair, one year after Rolex’s famous GMT-Master was released, that the black-dial Airman was presented to an international audience. While the GMT-Master, thanks in part to its legendary association with Pan Am Airlines, has gone on to great fame, skyrocketing prices, and multiple iterations, the Airman has quietly remained more of an obscure cult favorite.

The 24-hour bezel that was a hallmark trait of the original Airman is reproduced here and retains the locking feature that is pure charming 1950s technology. Rather than a ratcheting function commonly found in uni-or bi-directional bezels these days, the Airman No. 1 has a simple friction bezel that can be locked in place with a small thumbscrew crown at the 4 o’clock position on the case. It works well and is satisfying to use, though the crown no longer has the cross-hatched pattern of the original, a rare departure from history.

Glycine makes two versions of the Airman No. 1. The so-called “Purist” version, as its name suggests, is a pure 24-hour replica watch, with an hour hand that sweeps the dial only once per day. Thus, at high noon, the hour hand is confusingly pointing to the bottom of the dial, where 12:00 is found, while midnight, or 24:00, is at the top. This feature, with the rotating second 24-hour time scale, made the replica watch popular with pilots, since they were used to telling time this way, and the Airman became a popular choice of Air Force pilots during the Vietnam War. But a 24-hour replica watch never quite caught on with civilians used to telling time on a 12-hour dial. In that regard, the GMT-Master offers a more elegant solution, marrying a 12-hour dial with a 24-hour hand and bezel for a second time zone.

With the small dial and engraved metal bezel, the replica watch actually wears even smaller than its size, giving a true vintage feel and one I struggled to come to grips with during my week with it. Long lugs and a 20 mm strap width mitigate some of the proportions but I never quite got used to seeing such a tiny replica watch on my 7-1/4 inch wrist. That said, I commend Glycine for being bold enough to retain the original size. If you can’t handle a replica watch that small, Glycine offers other similar Airman references in larger sizes.

Another vintage feature that usually gets updated in modern “re-issues” is the crystal. Acrylic gives way to sapphire in most cases, a concession to scratch resistance over the beautiful warmth that a plastic crystal offers. Here again, Glycine stayed true to the original, with a nicely domed plexiglass crystal that has more charm than a sapphire ever will, and offering the utility of a glass that can be buffed out and won’t shatter if dropped or smacked.

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Aside from the size and crystal, the Airman No. 1 continues the vintage vibe with a matte printed dial that keeps the same quaint serif font from its historical forebear. The steel case, down to its slender lugs, is high polished stainless steel, typical for a 1950s replica watch but less common on modern “tool” replica watches, and was something else to get used to (and difficult to photograph). The dial markings – small lume pips at the five-minute marks – and the hands have a creamy luminescence to them without the extreme faux patina some other throwback replica watches use. Rather than trying to emulate aged lume, it seems that the paint used here emulates how the Airman’s original 1950s tritium lume would have looked when new – more ecru than the sickly green of so much Superluminova.

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For people who prefer 12-hour time-telling, Glycine concedes with the Airman No. 1 GMT, the reference I had for my week of wear. This version compromises by driving the main hour hand around twice per day, pointing to the lume pips on the dial for the hours, while a slim GMT hand does 24-hour duty, and can track two additional time zones, pointing at the 24-hour scale on the dial as well as the bezel’s markings. Though this is a departure from the original Airman and one that initially disappointed me, I soon grew to appreciate it – especially when wearing the replica watch in rotation with other pieces, since going from 12-hour to 24-hour time-telling can be a mental challenge, while still offering the added utility of tracking three time zones.

Every replica watch collector has his or her grail, a quarry that is stalked, often just missed, and agonized over. Mine has long been the Glycine Airman. I love its obscurity, its uncompromising, purpose-built design, and its origins in the cockpit of a long-haul airliner. I’ve trolled vintage sales websites, eBay, and military forums looking for the right example. Many old ones are questionable or incomplete, often lacking the proper crowns or missing the hacking pin, or are in rough shape after a few years flying sorties on the wrist of an F-86 Sabre pilot above Southeast Asia. So I never pulled the trigger for one of my own. But now, having worn the Airman No. 1, I’m not sure I’ll continue looking for a vintage example. I might just look for a new one.

No matter which version you choose, the hand set used on the Airman No. 1 still uses the telltale arrowhead hour hand with its long pointed tail. Far from a mere design flourish, that arrow acts as a clever guide to deciphering 24-hour time at a glance, since it always points to the more conventional, non-military time for any given hour. For example, when it is 20:00, the tail of the hour hand points to the 8 on the dial; thus it is 8pm. On the GMT version, I did find the sliver-thin, polished GMT hand, which has no lume on it, hard to read against the black dial.

Driving the Airman No. 1 is a simple Sellita-based automatic movement that Glycine calls calibre GL 293, which kept acceptable accuracy over a week, on and off the wrist. Vintage Airman examples (Airmen?) used a few different movements over their long run, including those from Felsa and A. Schild. While the new replica watch is hackable (the ability to stop the seconds hand when the crown is pulled), the vintage ones had another quaint solution, similar to the locking bezel; when the crown was pulled out to set the time, a small pin would pop up through a hole in the dial to stop the seconds hand at 12:00 (or 24:00 as the case may be) so you could synchronize the time to a radio signal – important for pilots.

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Information about the Airman No. 1 can be found on the Glycine website. Some of the facts in this article were derived from the excellent and comprehensive e-book by André Stikkers, entitled “Glycine Airman: a 24 hour timeline of flight” which can be found online.

All photos: Gishani Ratnayake

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Tags Glycine Airman No. 1