Just before the big BaselWorld 2009 exposition, Glash?ɬ�tte Original (hereafter GO) presents their Senator Navigator Perpetual Calendar.

This 44mm pilot watch in stainless steel has a matt black dial (as a pilot’s watch always should have) with large Arabic numerals and blued hour and minute hands. I don’t know if I am a big fan of too much functionality on a pilot’s watch, especially if they seem not very functional (moonphase and leap year).

However, as GO put it themselves in their press release: “The added perpetual calendar functions have been seamlessly integrated into the dynamic design of this efficient timepiece.” Probably only few will actually control the flight control stick in an aircraft, so it doesn’t really matter of course. As you can see on the picture below, the leap year is indicated with the small hand at 12 o’clock. The red ‘L’ in this subdial indicates that it is a leap year.

Inside ticks GO caliber 100-07, a manufacture caliber, that has a power reserve of more than 55 hours (+/- 10%) and features a reset mechanism to reset the second hand that enables quick synchronization. The reset button is being operated from an extra button on the side of the case at 8 o’clock.

The vintage look strap (calf skin) gives this watch a real pilot’s watch look.

Other Basel novelties by Glash?ɬ�tte Original are the Senator Meissen Tourbillon and the Lady Serenade Chronograph. I will do some coverage on both later on.

What do you think of a pilot’s watch with all these fancy features? Please share your thoughts by clicking ‘comments’ below.

This year, BaselWorld 2009 is being held from March 26th till April 2nd. Together with Frank from Monochrome.nl, I’ll be visiting Basel from March 26th till March 29th. We booked our flights, hotels and together with Kyle from Perpetuelle.com we are planning our meetings already.

The pre-Basel news is already flooding the various watch portals. My earlier post on the Omega Speedmaster Pro 40th anniversary model should also classify as pre-Basel news. Omega has their press-kits already available for the large public on http://www.omega.ch/index.php?id=65. Breitling will be introducing their Navitimer 125th Anniversary model, as does Bvlgari.

Their Sotirio Bvlgari watch is a tribute to its founder, 125 years ago. Besides limited editions, tributes and anniversary models, brands are also introducing regular models [pheww]. Blancpain already spread the word on their Blancpain 500 Fathoms watch. This 48mm diameter titanium built watch is water-resistant to 1000 metres.

Smaller brands, such as Linde Werdelin, are introducing their new watches as well of course. Linde Werdelin’s SpidoLite watch with a movement finished by Svend Anderson. Ariel Adams over at Ablogtoread.com already blogged about this watch.

As a Rolex fan, I wonder what this Geneva based company is going to reveal this year. They are known to keep their new watches secret till the day of the BaselWorld Expo. I also wonder whether the atmosphere in Basel will be influenced by the global credit crisis, as it did during the SIHH expo a few weeks ago.

Anyway, looking forward to meet some of the LinkedIn ‘A Passion for Watches’-group members (almost 1000 this month), people I have only communicated with via e-mail (or LinkedIn) and some of the ‘regulars’ who will also be visiting Basel.

The new watch portal Perpetuelle.com, asks everyone to join their contest “Win a Watch – Own an Omega”. The Omega you can win, is a Speedmaster Date (ref. 3210.51.00). It is a brand new watch, with box and all papers of course.

There is no “catch” to participating in this contest. It is open to anyone who follows the rules. Perpetuelle.com is holding this contest to help create greater awareness for their website and also to showcase their great forum and forum posting software.

You can participate starting now till April 2nd, 2009. The winner of the contest (and thus the watch) will be declared on the 15th of April.

Please find about the rules by clicking this link.

Perpetuelle is the first and only watch forum to offer video (YouTube, etc) insertion directly into your forum posts, and they also made it very easy to insert photos as well.

This is all in keeping with their motto “Your Online Watch Community” – is here to offer a fun, stress free place for watch owners, collectors & enthusiasts to enjoy.

Boesch Motorboote from Kilchberg (Lake Zurich) creates reddishbrown mahogany boats since 1920. Boesch boats are famous for their quick starts, especially useful for water-ski matches. To celebrate its 80th birthday, IWC created the Aquatimer Chronograph Boesch, limited to 300 timepieces. Which is, compared to most other limited editions in this segment, really limited. The caseback of this watch has a mahogany inlay with a marine screw propeller and the dial shows the Boesch logo below the date window.

Watch-Site, one of my blog sponsors, has this IWC Aquatimer Chronograph Boesch in stock and was so kind to let me do a review on this time piece. The pictures below do represent the actual watch for sale.

After removing the white carton box, printed ‘Boesch’ and the usual ‘IWC Schaffhausen’ logos, a black box appears. This big black IWC presentation box has the mahogany ‘deck’, as shown in the pictures below. Unfortunately, you won’t use the box much I guess The boxes are a bit bigger than the one of the regular IWC models. Below the mahogany deck (you can lift it out) are the booklets, warranty card and IWC polishing cloth.

This watch (ref. IWC 3782), is waterresistant to 120 meters (12 bar), has a screw-down crown, a slightly domed sapphire crystal and is a whopping 44mm in diameter. The movement is IWC caliber 79320, which is based on the proven Valjoux/ETA 7750 movement. This movement is known for its ‘wobble’, this is caused by the rotor that has one free spinning direction. Most mechanical watch afficinados love the fact that they can feel the free spin of their mechanical watch on their wrist. The finish of the movement is up to IWC’s high standards.

As written above, the case back of this watch has the mahogany inlay with a propeller. A welcome surprise, because most watches seem to have display backs (or see-through case backs), even some of the diver’s watches. Luckily, IWC takes this serious enough with the Aquatimer with a water resistance of 12 bar. As you can see on the picture below (don’t mind the IWC protection sticker, which is still on it), it looks amazing and reminds us of the Jacques Cousteau diver that IWC introduced in 2004.

One of the most stunning things about this watch in my opinion, is the color of the dial and rubber strap. It has a very subtle brownish color, which I didn’t see at first when unpacking the watch with little light. The rubber strap has the same brown color and features the brand’s name on each side. IWC uses the same system for adding and removing straps as they normally do. You’ll have to press the push pin before removing the strap (or link in case of a bracelet). It is a safe additional locking system in comparison to the regular push pins (e.g. Omega) or screws (like Rolex).

As you can see, the crown and the push buttons for the chronograph are big and therefore easy to operate. To set the time and / or date, the crown needs to be unscrewed first. One click is for correcting the date, one more is for setting the time.

The finish of IWC’s watch cases is superb! There is nothing negative I can comment on their craftmanship with respect to their watch cases. The combination of satin finish and the small number of polished elements looks so incredibly fine. Kudos to IWC for this.

Watch-Site offers this watch (BNIB) for 6500 Euro and comes with correct filled-in warranty card, booklets, polishing cloth and boxes. Visit http://www.watch-site.nl/watch_detail.php?photo=34 for high-res pictures that show a lot of detail.

Ace Jewelers in Amsterdam is going shopping cart. So, what’s special about that? Some [smaller] independent brands even sell watches via their own website. True. However, Ace Jewelers is an authorized dealer of big brands, like [for example] Baume et Mercier, Breitling, Ebel, IWC, Longines, Omega and TAG Heuer.

Authorized dealers are of course permitted [by the watch manufacturers] to have their own website, but selling these watches via their webshop is quite unique. By doing this, an authorized dealer like Ace Jewelers is – finally – able to compete in a fair manner with the online watchstores that offer watches via the grey channels.

The added value to customers is that you are also able to visit the ‘brick and mortar’-store to pick-up the watch or to get good after sales service if necessary, without the hassle of sending your precious watch by mail.

Another great selling point of Ace Jewelers is that they offer an incredible extent of information about their products. Some product pages even includes videos of the watch!

When ordering a watch, you can select to have it send to you by mail or to pick it up in their store in Amsterdam. Payments are accepted through the well known credit card companies, iDEAL (a safe Dutch online payment system that works with most of the Dutch banks), bank transfer, cash on delivery and of course by ATM in the Ace store if you choose to pick up your watch yourself.

A safe way to buy your wrist watch online, from an authorized dealer. Besides this, the website offers great functionality for comparing wristwatches, ordering watch accessories (watch boxes, leather [watch manufacturer] straps, etc.) and all watch manuals are on-line accessible in PDF format.

I hope that IWC, Omega and the other aforementioned brands support this initiative by Ace Jewelers. I believe that customers want to be able to do an online queste before they go out to the shops and buy a watch, and finding an authorized dealer with a professional on-line frontend application is helping them tremendously in the web of online watch dealers.

In my opinion, this is the only way to go for these established brands to keep up with the ever growing needs [for information] of the modern customer.