Horological Meandering

A less famous space watch - and a present for my father

 

Some years ago I decided to get my father a watch (again) and given his oblique relationship to space I wanted some association there. While a Speedmaster Pro would have been one natural choice, he is of the age, where he is hardly a fan of manual winding, so an automatic had to be it. In the end it turned out to be a watch from a manufacturer I had liked a lot some 15 years, while living in Switzerland.

I decided to go for the Yuri Gagarin 50th Anniversary Limited Edition of the Fortis Spacematic GMT. Was thinking of a chrono but in the end the Yuri Gagrin did it for me, as well as the fact that the GMT complication is more likely going to be used by my father than a chrono.

While we are not talking high horology here, it is reasonably well finished and it seems to have given him two years of stress free use. The precision is supposedly very good from the relatively humdrum ETA movement used. The hands and the numerals are adequately illuminated and the 20ATM WR is more than generally necessary in space, too It does have a date but that's a feature for my father and the design is nicely clean, even if I would have prefered it with less text on the dial - at least they balanced it out left to right.

Here a shot of the back, confirming both the use by the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) as well as having a likeness of Yuri Gagrin from his pioneering mission in the centre of the case back. 

Which brings me to the next complicated question - namely what watch to get him for the coming birthday