Chronoboy64, these black and white dial (I personally call them the Ying-Yang Aero Compax, perhaps the name will stick eheh
😉!) are a bit of a mystery. Very few pieces have surfaced (including the one that Bernardini had) and in pretty much all of them (but here when I say "all" I'm literally talking about 3 or 4 pieces at most) they were mounted on Ref 890101/01, which is later than Ref 890100/01 (like yours): Ref 890100/01 dates from about 1963/64 and was very short lived and soon replaced 1 or 2 years later by Ref 890101/01.
Both Ref 890100/01 and 890101/01 have 24h dials and have a 15min counter that actually ticks every 30 seconds (Breitling will later have the same thing on one iteration of their AVI chronographs but I believe UG was the very first to use such a modification) and same case, but they are otherwise different in terms of the bezel (black and silver for day and night in Ref 890100/01, all silver in Ref 890101/01) and also in terms of the fact that in Ref 890100/01 the hours are OUTSIDE compared to the minutes (only watch I have ever known with such a characteristic) whereas in Ref 890101/01 the hours are more traditionally inside the minute track: this fact is reinforced by the hands, as in Ref 890100/01 the hour hand is LONGER than the minute hand (and they are both silver, more on this later), whereas in Ref 890101/01 the hour and minute hands go back to be "standard" lengths and they are black.
It is my strong believe that these Ying-Yang dials (please allow me to call them like this
😀!) should be more correctly mounted on Ref 890100/01 (maybe as a /02???), or possibly they are even earlier than this and could have been prototype dials for what would eventually become Ref 890100/01, but they were finally never used on the final version of Ref 890100/01.
The reasons why I believe that these dials are earlier or contemporary of Ref 890100/01 and hence not correct on Ref 890101/01 are the followings:
- Applied logo and with pointy U instead of round U. This (applied) logo is typical of late 50/early 60 UG and Ref 890101/01 is late 60 when the round U printed logo was established. A similar pattern from applied pointy U logo to printed round U logo is observable also on Ninas/Evil Ninas
- In these dials, as in Ref 890100/01, the hours are OUTSIDE, hence they should pair with an hour hand longer than the minute hand (like Ref 890100/01) and not with an hour hand shorter than the minute hand (like Ref 890101/01)
- The font of the subdials, all 3 of them, is exactly the same as the font in the subdial of Ref 890100/01, which is different to the font you see in Ref 890101/01
- It would make sense to use SILVER hands on these dials, as silver is clearly readable on both the white as well as the black portion of the dial, whereas black hands such as the ones of Ref 890101/01 would be poorly readable when the hands travel in the black portion
- Finally, I believe the bezel paired to such dials should be half black half white to complement the same characteristic on the dial itself, hence the bezel of Ref 890100/01 is more appropraite than the bezel of Ref 890101/01
To me these dials would righly belong on a Ref 890100/01-like watch but with the following 2 differences compared to a "standard" Ref 890100/01:
- The subdial hands I believe should be thin and black/dark blue, like the ones of first execution Evil Ninas. I think they would look better than the paddle ones as on these dials there are no thick markers for even hours like on Ref 890100/01 and also it would be consistent with early Ninas/Evil Ninas and finally a thin hand on the hour subdial at 6 o'clock would not cover the red North arrow
- More importantly, and this is the main difference compared to a standard Ref 890100/01, the minute counter is standard 30 min and not 15 min ticking every 30 seconds, hence you would need a Venus caliber modified for the 24h but not for the minute counter changing every 30 secs
Hence I strongly believe that those watches you see outhere where this dial is mounted on Ref 890101/01 have been put (wrongly) together: I bet that if you start the chronograph on all of those the minute hand will tick every 30 secs and not every minute as it should given the counter.
Happy to ear other people opinion on this, but in the meantime..... hail the Ying-Yang Aero Compax
😉, IMHO it looks great!
