Fnord.

My neighbor has a Fortis ‘Flieger’, or pilot’s watch. In his case, he used to be a flight surgeon, so it’s been up in a F18, unlike most of the Walter Mitty-types. Although I used to fly, my poor Christopher Ward has only flown passenger-class.

But I digress. This watch, which seems to be ref 595.11.46, is an ETA 2824-2 based design, using the undecorated base grade movement with Etachron fine regulator. It was running slow, so I volunteered to tweak it.

Unlike the the CW, Fortis uses a screwed caseback, so I got to use my new tool:

Man, I love having an excuse to buy new tools. This one is Indian, and cost about 20 bucks. Works pretty well, didn’t leave any marks on the case.

Here’s what you see:

Plastic movement spacer, basic colimaconnage on the rotor, looks like a gilt finish on the movement, very serviceable. This one was running slow, about -17s/day. Since I don’t yet have a timing machine, I loaned my CW to him and wore this for a couple of days, where I’d adjust, wear, measure and repeat.

After three tweaks, I had it down to under 2s/day, slightly fast. That required about 2 marks on the Etachron, which indicates that he really should get it serviced sometime soon. I’ll probably recommend Asim Gunalpt here in San Diego, as I’ve had good luck with him in the past.

Watch review

If I’m reading the caseback correctly, this is a reference 595.11.46, which has zero hits in google. So maybe that’s the wrong model number. It seems to resemble ref 595.10.41 (vendor link):

The watch differs quite a bit from my CW:



Much less bezel, much less detail on the face, bigger numbers and hands, a bold orange second hand, slightly larger crown, flat black painted face. I really like the screwdown caseback, which helps it attain its 200m rating. (The CW is 50m, meaning that I shouldn’t lap-swim with it. I did once, but it’s a bad idea.) 200M is nice, and makes the watch more versatile and durable.On the negative side, the face’s visual details were less well executed. Here’s a close-up of the face:



If you look at the ends of the hour markers, you’ll see white paint where the Luminova fill wasn’t applied. It goes all the way around the dial, and is quite annoying in person.Compare and contrast with the CW dial, which has applied and filled markers:



(Photo copied from this page on the CW forum.)The Fortis definitely presents a more workmanlike appearance, it makes the CW look very dressy. Which it really is. The CW is an aviator-styled dress watch, and the Fortis is just a tool watch.

I have to say that CW wins hugely on value. The Fortis retails for around 600, though discounts are available to around 400 or so.

Either one is a nice watch, but I’m quite happy to stick with my CW. I do wish the CW had the better water resistance, but that’s not a big deal. The higher-grade movement in CW is a huge advantage, and the better dial is much nicer in my opinion.

In terms of the hands, I really like the graceful shape of the Spitfire-inspired CW hands. The shape of the Fortis hands, modeled after instruments, is sharply angular and less to my liking. The orange second hand is really cool, though its not lumed so its invisible at night. Both watches really could use a timing bezel and lume on the second hand, dang it.

(The CW forums claim that he’ll introduce a diving watch at Basel 2007, so maybe that’ll address both. Hmm. I can’t afford this.)

One more thing - the Fortis has anti-reflective coatings on both sides of its crystal, which is flat. CW has a cambered crystal with AR only on the inside. I like the CW approach better. On this Fortis, there were places where the external coating had been scratched or worn off, which was quite noticeable. The internal coating is not prey to that, and was equally effective when paired with a cambered crystal.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 15th, 2007 at 10:52 am and is filed under Aviation, Reviews and recommendations, Watches and timekeeping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.