Messages: 98 Location: Central Europe
Registered: November 2004
Re: In addition to meeting the COSC standard, I think you'll find even better accuracy...
Mon, 13 June 2005 04:10
"ETA is now starting to make the thermo-compensated quartz movements available to other watch brands, and there are a couple of alternates for similar accuracy (Longine's VHP movement - a different ETA quartz)."
There are some confusion about the ETA thermocompensated movements, so let's clarify things. It took me a couple of months of research and numbers of exchanged emails with ETA but finally I got the picture.
First of all, the current Longines VHP Perpetual Calendar movement is called ETA 252.611 and is one of the movements of the ETA Thermoline Family. The name of "Thermoline Family" was introduced in 2004 by ETA. That does not mean that the movements were not designed at an earlier date. The real meaning of the introduction of the Thermoline Family is that from 2004 these movements are available to any brand manufacturers. All the Breitling SuperQuartz movements were designed in 2001 but Breitling had the exclusivity for a couple of years as part of the deal between ETA and Breitling and that exclusivity is expired by now. These SuperQuartz movements are part of the Thermoline Family and available to any watch manufacturers since 2004 (of course only Breitling can call them SuperQuartz but that is only a marketing issue). All the movements in the ETA Thermoline Family share the same thermocompensation technology so their perform similarly. But how old is this technology, which watch had the first movement with this technology?
The answer is surprising: the Longines Conquest VHP Perpetual Calendar (L.564 = ETA 252.611) introduced in 1996(!!!) is the first watch that used a movement that is available today in the ETA Thermoline Family. These days Longines uses the same movement in its Flagship VHP Perpetual Calendar model. So the movements in the ETA Thermoline Family are sharing a thermocompensation technology that is about 9 years old. It does not mean that the technology is too old but rather that is so good that there is no better one available since 1996.
Just as a side-note: the Longines VHP (L.276) introduced in 1984 and was made till 1995 is a different movement to the Longines VHP Perpetual Calendar (L.564 = ETA 252.611). Both thermocompensated and perform similarly but using different thermocompensation technologies. The early VHP without the perpetual calendar function used dual-oscillator for thermocompensation. The new VHP Perpetual Calendar - and the rest of the movements in the ETA Thermoline Family - use a single 32kHz oscillator and temperature sensor(s) on the IC for thermocompensation.
Citizen Exceed Gold EAB74-1082 (Cal.0330G)
Breitling Aerospace E75362 (B75 = ETA E10.351)
Omega Constellation Perpetual Calendar (Cal.1680 = ETA 252.511)
Longines Conquest V.H.P. Perpetual Calendar (L.546.2 = ETA 252.611)
Casio ProTrek PRW-1100YTJ-1JF Solar Atomic (Cal.3042)
Arbiter 1093B GPS Master Clock
Witschi Q Test 6000 + GPS
