[time-nuts] Most accurate clock on your wrist

[Neon John]

On Thu, 19 Apr 2007 09:53:42 -0700, "Tom Van Baak"
<tvb at LeapSecond.com> wrote:

>> I've been waiting with baited breath for a GPS watch.  NOT a NAVAID on
>> the wrist but a simple GPS-synced watch.  It would seem to me that
>> making a miniature GPS receiver would be much easier than making a
>> WWVB receiver.
>> 
>> Unfortunately that watch ain't it.  Gad, they need a good industrial
>> designer!  
>> 
>> Maybe they'll put the same electronics in a table/travel clock.  If it
>> had a 1PPS connector on the back, so much the better :-)
>> 
>> John
>
>Have you looked at the various Casio GPS watches?

Too big and ugly.  I don't want to look like a poseur SEAL or marathon
runner :-)  This Luminox I wear now is about as far as I want to go
down that road and even then I had to wait for 'em to offer one
without the "Navy SEALS" moniker on the face.

My absolute perfect watch would be one merging a Casio, tritium
backlight and GPS receiver.  The Casio I'm referring to has an analog
dial with the LCD display as part of the crystal.  You look through
the LCD to see the dial.  Put tritium vials on the analog part and add
a GPS timing receiver and perfection.

The watch that I liked most of any I've ever had is the old Sensor,
sold by JS&A wholesale back in the 70s.  One of the very first LCD
watches, it has a flat tritium capsule under the display.  Bright
enough back then to use as a flashlight for finding keyholes and the
like.  I still have it but the tritium has decayed so that the glow is
just barely perceptible with night-adjusted eyes.

I worked at TVA's Sequoyah Nuclear Plant back then.  Several of us in
the office bought Sensors at the same time.  Naturally a contest
developed to see who could produce the most accurate watch.  The
sensor had a trimmer cap under the back which was good to a few
seconds a month.  After that temperature compensation was required.  I
made surface mount NPO caps before there were surface mount components
by removing the outer coating from a disc cap, nipping off little
chunks and soldering them to the tiny PCB.

We all achieved better than a few seconds a year so no one was ever
named the winner.  That's probably where my time-nuttiness got started
:-)

John
---
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
Cleveland, Occupied TN
All great things are simple and many can be expressed in single words:
Freedom, Justice, Honor, Duty, Mercy, Hope.  -Churchill