Glycine Airman knowledge sought

Emre Kris' Glycine website is back up. It is here: https://glycintennial.com/ Emre is adding content regularly. Responding to Tubber's question of 7 January. The vintage Glycine Combat hacking mechanism is the same a that of the Airman

Here are "under the dial" photographs of the Glycine Airman hacking mechanism. The device is not part of the watch movement. the operating lever is attached to the movement ring. The end of the lever opposite the wire fits a notch in the winding stem. Pulling the stem into the setting position pushes the wire up to catch the second hand.


This photograph shows the entire lever with wire at the mid-right.



This is a close-up of the wire.

James Sadilek -- ccwatchmaker

Interesting idea. This system would allow a relatively cheap conversion of most non hacking movement watches to hacking of a sort. mainly its a mechanically assisted back hack, but with very little stress on the movement itself.
Its also not dependent on how tight the arbor fit is, so long as its just loose enough not to cause damage to the pin or the second hand.

I didn’t know they made a “noon day” version of this watch, and so now I must have one.

or should I say two?

Not as quick as even back hacking which you can do from any position on the dial but effective just the same.
I've fine tuned my SONA to an accuracy of 1-2 seconds in 12 hours but when I put it on a shelf over night there's no position I put it in where it won't gain as much as 5-15 seconds in 8-10 hours. Wearing it during the day its pretty much dead on but every morning I have to back hack it for those seconds.
I like these watches and bought a second as a spare, since they are dirt cheap, but it won't back hack. Its fairly accurate though.
For a watch with tiny sub seconds dial which are nearly useless other than to assure me that the watch is running , being a few seconds off per day is no biggie.Just check and adjust hour and minutes if need be and forget about it.
For a watch with central second sweep hand being off as little as three seconds in 12 hours gets under my skin.
Probably the most accurate watch I own is a cheap $12 Indian refurb, possibly with a Fortis movement that has run no more than 1 sec + per every five days. It is loose enough that it won't back hack at all.
If it gets more than two seconds ahead I wrap the band around a large vitamin bottle crown down position then check it every hour or so till positional error brings it into sinc.
For whatever unknown reason there's no noticeable positional error from laying it dial up on a shelf.
This way its been on time within a couple of seconds for months at a time. Only needing resetting if I forget to keep it wound.
Then I just wait till the seconds on the online clock near the position of the second hand, give it a turn of the crown and shake it. It starts easily, then I finish winding it up . Then if I'm off a second or two + I use the positional error to regulate it. Then pull the crown and set the hour and minutes as the second hand continues its sweep. If no more than a second - I just let it go at that and it will catch up in five days or so.
Not a bad system once you figure a watches limitations, but not as convenient as hacking, and no stress on movement or arbor.

Long winded but I think I got my steps in proper order.

By the reference to "arbor fit" I assume you mean the cannon pinion. My thought is that if the cannon pinion is so tight that there is a possibility of damaging the second hand, then there is a definite danger in my opinion, of tearing teeth out of the minute wheel and causing unnecessary wear to other components in the setting mechanism.

It seems to me unwise to tighten a cannon pinion to the point that the watch can be stopped by turning the hands backward. Just last week I completed an expensive repair on a vintage Glycine Airman where a previous repairer had over tightened the cannon pinion to the point that the minute wheel post was sheared off while the owner was setting the hands.

It is true that this Glycine Airman hacking mechanism is adaptable to a variety of watches, but not cheap. The watch must have a metal movement ring of sufficient size and strength to carry the lever. The ring would need to be machined to provide clearance for the lever to move in and out and drilled for the pivot pin. The main plate of the movement has to have an opening milled in the side of the plate at the top of the dial for access to the dial for the wire, and the dial has to be drilled. Also, the sweep second hand has to be longer than the minute hand so the wire catches the second hand and not the minute hand, and the winding stem has to be modified to operate the lever. So while the design is adaptable, it could require considerable effort and expense to accomplish. From a production standpoint, all this can be accommodated in the initial design. As a one-off modification, probably it would not make economic sense.

James Sadilek -- ccwatchmaker.

Astronaut Charles Pete Conrad wore his Glycine Airman GMT pilot watch on Gemini V and on Gemini XI missions...
During the latter September 1966 mission, Ricjard Gordon made 2 EVAs and also exposed Conrad to the open space environment...
The Glycine Airman is one of only six watch makes that were ever used & directly exposed to outer space !
.

I own what might be considered the spiritual successor to these vintage Airmen - the Airman 18. The mechanism is different, there is no hacking wire and the size is 39mm, but it's a great watch 😀



Below are some photos to show how the bezel lock mechanism differs from the vintage examples. Rather than a block that locks the bezel by simple pressure, as far as I can see, the modern version is more of an inverted "L" shape with teeth that lock onto the bezel edge. It also seems to be attached to extra metal on the side of the case. Not sure if the macro shots show this clearly or not, but I tried 😁

Posted some Gemini XI NASA photos, clearly showing Conrad's personal Glycine Airman pilotwatch, which accumulated 10 days 22 hours space-flown time on Gemini V (1965) and Gemini XI (1966) ... of which about 2 hours 45 minutes exposed to outer space during Gordon's EVA
September 2020 on: https://moonwatchuniverse.tumblr.com/archive

Remind me please if somewhere you have a full accounting for all 6?

Excellent thread. I had briefly considered getting an old Airman over the years but never got too serious. Today, I just stumbled upon one locally, and as much as I hate the "I got a 2915 at a yard sale for 35 cents and a piece of pocket lint," I can honestly say I got a pretty good deal. Not a pocket lint kinda deal...but not bad. It is a handsome watch on the wrist, and I like it with a green or khaki nato. Now I have to fix the same locking crown problem the original poster had.

Has anyone found a source for just parts for these? I'm going to need a few. Having them fabricated has got to be prohibitively expensive.

I reached out to Jim. He is a gentleman, articulate and intelligent...and no doubt a talented watchmaker. Pricing is always a subjective issue. I'll probably just set it aside for now.

Having seen dozens of vintage Glycine Airman watches over the past several years, I have never seen one with the bezel clamp design depicted in the drawing posted by Tubber. In all the vintage Airman watches I have seen, there is, under the rotating bezel, quite a large hole drilled into the opening that comes from the side of the case where the thumbscrew that fastens the bezel clamp plate threads into. Rather than a pin (red #4 in the drawing) as in the drawing to prevent the thumbscrew from coming out, the end of the screw is cross-drilled and a pin is driven into the cross-drilled hole. The pin is sufficiently long to protrude from both sides of the screw and prevents the screw from being completely withdrawn from the case. In order to remove the screw completely, one can access the pin through the hole under the bezel and drive out the pin.

In the posted drawing, there does not appear to be any simple way to disassemble the clamp. I have to conclude the drawing is a figment of some person's imagination.