Accurate watches

I'm always interested in very accurate watches. I got one of those radio ones once, but it rarely picked up the signal so I returned it. Since I will soon move to Hawaii, I don't think even the radio clocks work out there.

My present watch is a Timex Expedition. I've had it for years and it started out keeping extraordinary time - the first 50 day it lost less than a quarter second! Then it started to run gradually faster and now it gains a second every 3 to 3.5 days. Very good, but I'd be happy to find something better at a decent price.

I'm not into the big watches that are supposed to be extra tough (not that I want something easiy broken). This one is about as large as i would want.

Aside from accurate time, I only seriously need the following:

Stop watch - pretty standard.

Alarms - LOTS of them. I once had one with 60, which is more than I need, but I can easily use 6-10.

Ability to easily read the dial - Indiglo is acceptable. Some watches that used a different light were too hard to read and it seem that their light killed battery power faster.

Any recommendation?

One other thing, about the alarms. The 60 alarm watch was nice, but not consumer friendly.

I'd like to see a watch that let you specify when it would go off (once a week, every day, every week day, etc). I can imagine the interface - just have 7 positions you can mark or unmark, representing what days you want it to work.

Also, there should be some kind of easier temporary deactivation, either by turning them all off at once or perhaps having "banks" of alarms (perhaps 10 in each if you have 60 alarms) which allows you turn turn off or on a bank at a time.

Anyway, those are my ideas. Does anything come close?

Bob

Have you considered 100ns accuracy? http://www.arbiter.com/pdf/ds_1088b.pdf will run on 12 volts with the appropriate power supply.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by busbar:
Have you considered 100ns accuracy? http://www.arbiter.com/pdf/ds_1088b.pdf will run on 12 volts with the appropriate power supply.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Interesting. But I did a quick scan and couldn't find anything about prices.

Bob

Swatch watch seems quite accurated,
my nokia phone is still on the dot after months(nearly a year).
Linfeng

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Spidey82:
Swatch watch seems quite accurated,
my nokia phone is still on the dot after months(nearly a year).
Linfeng<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

What are swatches guaranteed at? I checked with Timex not long ago and was surprised that they were guaranteed to be within 15 seconds a month. My watch right now would take at least 45 days get off that much, but still, that isn't bad.

On the phone, are you sure it doesn't get its time over the phone connection and thus it isn't like a regular time piece?

Bob

Trebor--

An Arbiter 1088B is ~$3500. Their low-end version is ~$900.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by busbar:
Trebor--

An Arbiter 1088B is ~$3500. Their low-end version is ~$900.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Ouch! Well, cross that off the list!

Bob

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Trebor:
On the phone, are you sure it doesn't get its time over the phone connection and thus it isn't like a regular time piece?
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This appears to be the case with my StarTAC. Normally dead on, when roaming in analong mode it starts to keep very poor time. Much worse than your most inexpensive watch.

-john

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Trebor:
What are swatches guaranteed at<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
The accuracy is not stated, but there is a line which says "Imcomparable precision of quarz for an exceptional degree of autonomy"
my watch is auto quarz. can run for 100 days when fully charge. Charge with body movement.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Trebor:
On the phone, are you sure it doesn't get its time over the phone connection and thus it isn't like a regular time piece?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I don't have my auto update on.

I have a simple Helbros watch that I got for $5 or $10 at a flea market type thing. It is so accurate that I only need to adjust it maybe every 2 years. I runs 4-5 years on a standard alkaline battery.

If you are moving to Hawaii, you may want to go back and purchase that radio clock again. WWVH broadcasts from Hawaii so that clock should be plenty accurate since you'll have very little propagation delay.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Lurch556:
If you are moving to Hawaii, you may want to go back and purchase that radio clock again. WWVH broadcasts from Hawaii so that clock should be plenty accurate since you'll have very little propagation delay.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Unfortunately, that isn't how it works. The broadcast out of Kauai (you can tell which is Kauai and which is Colorado because the Kauai station used a woman's voice) does not include the signal to watches and clocks. Only Colorado has it. I emailed them about it once and they said there would be a problem with the two signals interfering with each other. Apparently the clocks and watches are only set up to deal with one frequency. Also, they said it is costly to setup.

Where to get the accurate time:
www.time.gov

Maybe a little OT, but how accurate are the time displays in handheld GPS receivers?

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by busbar:
how accurate are the time displays in handheld GPS receivers?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Incredibly accurate. GPS transmitters are clocks and your receiver decides your location by comparing times among the clocks. The concept is simple, really. I wish I had thought of it!

It's is funny. GPS's receive time from multiple satellites to figure out where they are and do it by calculating the differences in time from each satellite. Anyway it says on them not to use them as a clock because they could be off by as much as .01 seconds.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Brock:
It's is funny. GPS's receive time from multiple satellites to figure out where they are and do it by calculating the differences in time from each satellite. Anyway it says on them not to use them as a clock because they could be off by as much as .01 seconds.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That accuracy is provided by their Rubidium clocks, which aren't quite as accurate as say, the hydrogen maser, or better yet, the Cesium fountain beam that N.I.S.T. (bureau-standards) uses
(which is accurate to +or- 1 -9billionth of a second), so theoretically, it could be off by a little less than a second in 20 million years.

-So says the New York Times in their Circuits magazine on Jan. 17

My current watch gains about 2+ seconds per month, (gaining is better than losing with this watch, since I can reset the seconds to 00 easily and don't have to futz with the minutes) it's a Breitling. My best watch in terms of accuracy is a "Micronta" (a.k.a. National Semiconductor) that loses less than 5 seconds per *year*. Just a fluke I think--But it's so good I just don't set it except for battery changes. I've had it running since the late 70's. Neither watch has all the alarms you want

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Trebor:
I'm always interested in very accurate watches.
Aside from accurate time, I only seriously need the following:
Stop watch - pretty standard.
Alarms - LOTS of them. I once had one with 60, which is more than I need, but I can easily use 6-10.
Ability to easily read the dial - Indiglo is acceptable. Some watches that used a different light were too hard to read and it seem that their light killed battery power faster.

Any recommendation?
I'd like to see a watch that let you specify when it would go off (once a week, every day, every week day, etc). I can imagine the interface - just have 7 positions you can mark or unmark, representing what days you want it to work.

Also, there should be some kind of easier temporary deactivation, either by turning them all off at once or perhaps having "banks" of alarms (perhaps 10 in each if you have 60 alarms) which allows you turn turn off or on a bank at a time.

Anyway, those are my ideas. Does anything come close?

Bob<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The Timex Internet Messenger watch seems to meet nearly all the requirements you listed, except that it only has 5 alarms, and the display is rather chock full of information, which makes it harder to read quickly.
Very accurate time since it picks up the time signal from the pager network, and yes, it should work in HI.
Alarms can be set a year in advance to any date, and set to go off daily, weekly, weekends only, weekdays only, or yearly. The alarms can be individually disarmed, but not really in a bank as you wanted.
Stopwatch function can store up to 99 laps and give you the best time (= shortest) out of the bunch-
Timer function will allow for count down from 99 hours, and starts the chronograph at the end of the timer period, so you know how long it's been since the timer ended. (Could be useful to know how many hours your 3 minute egg was actually cooking for).

The time is very precise, and DST is automatically accounted for, as well as your location- if you travel to another city, it will automatically correct your time zone and display the location where you are (could be handy if your friends play a prank on you and drop you off somewhere in another part of the country while you snooze-

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Trebor:

On the phone, are you sure it doesn't get its time over the phone connection and thus it isn't like a regular time piece?

Bob<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I can verify this to be so because I recently traveled to a location three time zones away and the phone picked up the local time when I turned it on.