[KBM]

Originally Posted by Uppersouth

Your vintage pilot looks amazing! Killer pic as well!

Thanks much, Lee!

Originally Posted by Undefeatable

I've never seen this watch before coming into this thread. Without a doubt, one of the most aesthetically pleasing watches I've ever seen. Every feature is, in my opinion, perfectly executed. Literally every part of the watch has a detail in it, from the:
-hybrid coin edge/fluted bezel
-railroad track style outter ring with diamonds painted on the 3 and 9 position
-the 2 sets of fonts for the 2 sets of numbers
-the heart tipped hour hand
-the tiny yet useful railroad track printing on the inner sub-seconds dial
-simple lugs to frame the stellar case and dial
-well sized crown that doesn't stick out too much.

I'll take it

Hey, Kevin,

It's funny that you pointed out all those details about the watch, as many of them were aspects I observed myself when I was choosing this piece. Mind you, the actual purchase happened when a mint pre-owned came about from a dealer I trust, but before that I'd spent a long time admiring pilot watches and determining what I would want in a piece for myself.

Some challenges I faced in the hunt were either the watches were a little too big and thick for my taste (IWC's big pilot comes to mind, beautiful as it is), had a date which ruined the design (I'm looking at you, Longines Heritage 1935 - Czech Air Force reedition) or were a little too plain for my linking in the long term (like the IWC Mark XII LE of a couple years back). The Vintage Pilot, I found, presented a solution to all those points, with an added flair of history to the model.

As a final fun fact, it is powered by a manual wind caliber based on the Jones pocket watch movement, which is pretty cool:

Originally Posted by artschool

I only got my licence last year but I think he is correct. elapsed time is important as when using a paper chart you would calculate heading and an estimate of time for that leg. so a chrono makes that much easier.

as usual technology trumps the old methods so I use a program called Skydemon for navigation. but tend to use the stopwatch function on my speedy to record fuel tank change elapsed time as a backup.

Thanks for chipping in!