Caliber 8800 accuracy

[Boggy]

This year I purchased my first high end automatic watch, brand new Seamaster Professional that closely resembles watches from 007 movies with Pierce Brosnan. I am wearing it every day for few months now, and it has been impressively accurate gaining about one second a day or two. But few days ago it suddenly started to be slow by a second per day. That was going on for two days, at which point I manually adjusted hands (keep in mind, I never had to actually move hands since the day I bought it, I only had to stop second hand to let the time catch up, and let it go every few days). After I adjusted hands, the watch is back to normal, gaining a little bit of time. Is this normal? I did not drop it nor hit it, why would it start losing time then fix itself?

 

[watchyouwant]

Maybe a quartz watch won't loose/gain ONE second per Day? That can ruin your busy schedule....

 

[ErichPryde]

Boggy, welcome to the forum. Did you know that mechanical watches gain or lose time ever so differently depending upon the position they are in? Accuracy is taken in 6 different positions, and then averaged. I've got an 8400 powered watch (a sibling to your 8900) that picks up time during the day (around 2 seconds or so) and then loses that time dial up on the nightstand at night. In essence, it runs pretty darn close to zero total gain, but only because it runs slow in one position and fast in the average of the others.

Have you ever timed your watch? You can download an app that is "good enough" to get you a feel for the accuracy in each position. My guess- since the watch was losing time and then suddenly returned to normal, is that something ever so slight changed in either your daily activities, that impacted the watch position throughout the day, or it was positioned differently overnight somehow.

 

[Walrus]

watchyouwant

Maybe a quartz watch won't loose/gain ONE second per Day? That can ruin your busy schedule....

What’s that citizen quartz that’s accurate to a second a year. That what the ad copy says anyway pretty cool.

 

[ErichPryde]

Walrus

What’s that citizen quartz that’s accurate to a second a year. That what the ad copy says anyway pretty cool.

The series 0001 or whatever?
I would believe it. Citizen has always had pretty accurate quartz watches, the Eco drives that are radio controlled update every single night from an atomic clock... needless to say they're not often wrong.

 

[Boggy]

I always wore quartz watches, then one day purchased Japan made SKX watch for my kid. That was before I found out that SKX was a thing and was soon to be discontinued. Anyhow, my kid gave it back to me, and that got me started on automatic watches, never looked back.

 

[josiahg52]

This contains some of my observations regarding the cal. 8800.

https://omegaforums.net/threads/omega-8800-caliber-accuracy.162280/#post-2216708

 

[Zman4eva]

ErichPryde

Boggy, welcome to the forum. Did you know that mechanical watches gain or lose time ever so differently depending upon the position they are in? Accuracy is taken in 6 different positions, and then averaged. I've got an 8400 powered watch (a sibling to your 8900) that picks up time during the day (around 2 seconds or so) and then loses that time dial up on the nightstand at night. In essence, it runs pretty darn close to zero total gain, but only because it runs slow in one position and fast in the average of the others.

Have you ever timed your watch? You can download an app that is "good enough" to get you a feel for the accuracy in each position. My guess- since the watch was losing time and then suddenly returned to normal, is that something ever so slight changed in either your daily activities, that impacted the watch position throughout the day, or it was positioned differently overnight somehow.

I do this as well. I find my Seamaster 300M gains 5 sec face up overnight but loses 3 sec when crown side down. I alternate how I store it at night and it evens out.