Setting time and date confusing? or am I just a bit dull?

SkunkPrince

Here's what I do:

- Wind the watch completely. You'll have to unscrew the crown to do this, as you know.
- Pull the crown to the first position and turn it "backwards" or "towards yourself" to advance the date to whatever it was yesterday.
- When the second hand reaches 12, pull the crown out to the next position.
- Wind the hands forward through the date change and then set to the proper time.
- Using some sort of time standard, push the crown in all of the way to start the watch again.

This ignores the GMT function because I have never owned one! Hopefully someone who does can review and update this procedure.

Donn Chambers

Your GMT does not have a quick set date — instead of that, it changes the hour hand in one-hour increments. That’s more useful in a GMT watch for traveling between timezones.

to change the date, move crown to position 2 and move the hour hand through however many 24-hour jumps are required.

From your description, sounds like you pulled it all the way out to position 3, which sets the time and GMT hand. Take another go and see if you can find position 2 and move the hour hand forwards and backwards.

cvalue13

Was unclear if needed, but Bob’s site has a decent review of the utilization of the GMT function(s) - as opposed to physically how to set the GMT hand - including for tracking 3 time zones

cvalue13

A great video that makes clear the most often confused but of setting a GMT watch with this configuration if you’re “home” and NOT tracking another time zone: you set the GMT hand to your “home” time on the 24hr scale, then secondarily set the 12hr dial’s hour hand also to your “home” time. That way when you travel, you merely change the hour 12hr dial’s hour hand.

(Unless you’re a weird purist who wants the GMT hand to always be set to actual Greenwich Mean Time…)

PandaSPUR

I have frequently forgotten this is how Omega watches set the date at times, it definitely takes some getting used to.
My GSOTM is actually like this too, despite not being a GMT watch.

The benefit of this is that you never have to worry about accidentally changing the date around midnight and potentially messing up the date complication.

Also protip, you can go backwards in hours to go backwards on the date. So if today is the 1st and your watch currently says its the 2nd, just go backwards a day instead of forwards a bunch.