HOME GALLERY DREAM LIST EMAIL LINKS
The Watch
Here is a closer look at a Ray's MoD military divers watch. I bought this in January 2005, from Ray Wong from Hong Kong. Ray apparently used to
build Orsa watches under licence, but this arrangement expired sometime during 2004. However these watches are very similar, so much so, that this watch
has an Orsa caseback, obviously Ray has a little old stock left over. The solid stainless steel case is a replica of the CWC watch commisioned to supply the British MoD, and has a unidirectional bezel, screw down crown and caseback, sapphire crystal and fixed lugbars with a 20mm spacing between the lugs. The watch came supplied with a black NATO style nylon webbing strap.
The movement is an ETA 2824-2. This is an automatic, hand windable, hacking movement with date, altho I chose the dial that shows no date, for a cleaner more purposeful look. The black dial has luminova on the hands and on the hour markers for night vision. The bezel pip at 1200 also has a luminous highlight, as does the second hand.
Impressions
As I mentioned a little further up, I got the no date version to keep the clean looks, and this dial and hand combination is extremely easy to read. One quick glance
is all that is needed to get the time, and this makes it a very functional tool watch.All the hands line up perfectly with the indices and the bezel has a firm movement through its rotation, with none of the looseness or sloppiness than I have seen reported by others who have bought watches from Ray. The luminosity of the hands and indices is acceptable, but not groundbreaking. I'm probably a little to spoilt by my Seiko Monster, as most everything pales in comparison to the Seiko divers when the lights go out.
The accuracy of this timepiece is truly staggering to me... after adusting the time when it first arrived, the watch is now exactly bang on .. this is after two weeks(!). Admittedly it has been out by two seconds on one or two days, but it always seems to adjust itself back to real time.
I do however have an issue with the movement, in that the second hand does not 'sweep' predictably. On some rotations the second hand 'shudders' through the seconds, and sometimes only moves once or twice in a second instead of the regular 8 ticks per second. (This is 28,800 vph movement therefore 8 ticks per second). This is an annoying trait as often it appears the watch is about to stall or looks like a quartz movement. Despite this, the watch remains extremely accurate.
The watch was supplied with a black NATO type nylon strap. The strap was of reasonable quality, but rather thin compared to some NATO's that I later got from Gnomon watches in Singapore. I generally wear this watch on a black and grey striped 'Bond' NATO, which gives it that little bit of extra class.
- Good Points:
- Price
- Delivery time
- Accuracy
- Looks
- Sapphire Crystal
- Bad Points
- Stuttering second hand (fixed - read further)
- Dissapointing Luminosity
Update: On February 5 I received a replacement watch from Ray. The sweep appears to be fine... but it dosen't hand-wind!! you should be able to
unscrew the crown, and then it is in postion to wind by hand, the first click adjusts the date (if it had one) and the second click 'hacks' and set the time.
Well, when I unscrew the crown, it dosen't clear the screw thread and simply screws back down, and there appears to be only one click out which sets time OK.
I have had the crown between these two positions where it freewheels, and this behaviour is not correct. Once again I have emailed Ray about the problem, and I
will require a replacement.. again! Quality control appears to be sadly lacking with Ray's products.
Update:Yes I did finally get a working watch, the third one to be sent to me. The movement on this seems to be fine although the crown when pulled out it is rather wobbly, much like a Vostok(!). And instead of being supplied with solid springbars as were the previous two iterations, this one came with rather weak and flimsy standard springbars.
Gallery
