# Quick info on my 2010 timing tests ...



## Catalin

On Jan 1st 2010 I have decided to start some 'extreme timing tests' (with a computer and a digital camera in movie mode together with one of my older programs slightly adjusted so that it will also display milliseconds) - I was initially thinking only at the new E510/E410 pair but in the end I started with 8 watches and today I had the first 'intermediary test' at around 10 days (actually 9) - I will not give yet detailed numbers, only a few things that I have noted:

- the tests for 8 watches take a lot more than I initially though - well over one hour if I include both the time to make the movies (around 3 * 8 about 10-20 seconds each, plus some extras when I see that the focus or light was not that good) plus the time to inspect those movies almost frame-by-frame and calculate the most likely interval ... this also places in the right context some of the results I have seen posted on this forum without really understanding the amount of time lost on them (even if the methodology was probably very different on many);

- this also means that I will probably only do in the future tests at around 2 weeks apart - so as to minimize the time spent yet still have two control points on each month;

- the 8 watches currently in the test are:
2 * E510
1 * E410
1 * 8F56 (JP 2008)
1 * 8F33 (US apx2000)
1 * 9923 (JP 1978)
1 * 5E31
1 * 7223 (non-heq from around 1980, but it seems that this is the second 7223 that I own from a total of 5 that is under 3s/month and I was curious on this one since it came only 1.5 months ago back from a full service at my watchmaker - which apparently did a great job);

- the results on 9 days seem to be in line with what I was expecting;

- the more interesting part of the test is that each month another group of watches 'sleeps' on my warm WiFi router (very close to wearing the watch all the time) - in January I decided to keep there the 8F56 and the initial E510 titanium, with the new steel pair E510/E410 going next on February, most likely together with the twin quartz which I might be tempted to adjust after that !

*Small update - here is the procedure using:
* 
a) a fast (>1 GHz) PC connected to the internet on a decent connection and synchronized to one of the major internet time servers just before the tests (this probably provides better than 10 milliseconds errors on the time on the computer - I use AboutTime);

b) a decent 'watch program' on the computer that will display the time including some fractions of a second in a very careful way (so as to always have very constant and small delays); unfortunately none of the major operating systems around are not even soft-realtime but I have modified one of my own programs on Windows and I believe the errors are in the same 10-20 ms interval and more important - very constant;

c) a decent (LCD) display with 60Hz refresh rate or better; the newer 120 Hz (some of which are also '3D ready') are even better!

d) a decent camera that can do movies at 25/30 (maybe even 50/60 or 100-200 if you have a 120 Hz monitor) frames/s ; ideally it should also do those movies in 'macro mode'!

e) a program that can display the movie from the above camera 'frame by frame' (VLC, even BSPlayer).

With all the above I believe you can easily measure with a precision clearly better than 100 milliseconds (and even down to the actual time for each frame on the monitor) - of course probably nothing better than 10 ms but even at 50-100 ms the results will be more than 10 times better than what we normally get with a 'human eye' ...

You can also see in a later post below a few frames extracted from one of the movies.

*SECOND UPDATE:
*
The program I use can be now found at:

http://caranfil.org/timing/setup_earthsunx_230_122_beta.exe

You will note that the 'main window' stays normally hidden and can be shown with either a click on it or just 'hoovering' with the mouse over it (there is a setting to configure that) - normally the milliseconds are not shown,but if on activation either SHIFT or CTRL is pressed the 'millisecond mode' is activated. If both SHIFT and CTRL are pressed the 'seconds beep' mode is also activated. See below a post with pictures from the mini-movies I am using for timing tests.

All WUS members that want to use it will be offered (when the final version is ready) a registered copy - you only need to use it and send me a private message here!

*ANOTHER UPDATE with links to the pictures of the watches:*

8F56 - http://caranfil.org/tz/R0016809_s.jpg
Exceeds - http://caranfil.org/tz/R0017434b.jpg
twinquartz - http://caranfil.org/tz/R0017293c.jpg
5e31 - http://caranfil.org/tz/R0017165_s.jpg
8F33 - http://caranfil.org/tz/R0017373c.jpg
7223 - http://caranfil.org/tz/R0017420d.jpg


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## Mechanikus

Thanks for sharing your plans.
I am interested in and waiting for the results.

Myself keep running my long term tests with with two new players just starting the qualification year:

http://www.mechanikus.hu/w_TheC.htm

http://www.mechanikus.hu/w_Ci4M.htm

Special thanks to *ppaulusz* to help me possesing Citizen Crystron 4 Mega in excellent condition.


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## uktrailmonster

Am I missing something here? If you just synchronise your watches with an atomic clock and check them again a month later, you'll get results accurate to within a few hundredths of a second per day. What more are you hoping to achieve?


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## Catalin

uktrailmonster said:


> Am I missing something here? If you just synchronise your watches with an atomic clock and check them again a month later, you'll get results accurate to within a few hundredths of a second per day. What more are you hoping to achieve?


Well, first of all it is nice to actually measure those errors and not just assume things :-d

Second - the more complex method used will probably accelerate the process of measuring the real accuracy with at least one degree of magnitude compared to the 'generic visual' approach - so for instance instead of having to wait for 1-2 years to have some reliable results for the new E510/E410 pair I might get them in two months (including the research on the next point).

Third - as I have also described at the end of the initial post - I will also have a generic idea on how the precision is actually related to the (average) temperature for wildly different calibers, including a thermocompensated one more than 30 years old (which if possible I would also like to adjust somewhere back to the original performance).


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## Mechanikus

uktrailmonster said:


> Am I missing something here? If you just synchronise your watches with an atomic clock and check them again a month later, you'll get results accurate to within a few hundredths of a second per day. What more are you hoping to achieve?


I am not sure you are missing something just my focus on accuracy is a bit different than most of others I discuss it.

I am interested in the long term 'maintainable' accuracy what I can count on for a long time. That is why I consider the standard deviation of daily (mechanical watch) or monthly (quartz watch) deviations.

That is my primary qualifier of accuracy.

Obviously as a result I can check the yearly deviations against the manufacturers' specs as well.

I adore the hunt for microseconds and read the results with interest, but it is not in my focus so I do not put together computerised camera system connected to atomic clock.

If I had the opportunity I would rather run more HEQ tests in parallel.

If you are interested in the results of that approach please be my guest on my site.


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## South Pender

Mechanikus said:


> I am interested in the long term 'maintainable' accuracy what I can count on for a long time. That is why I consider the standard deviation of daily (mechanical watch) or monthly (quartz watch) deviations.
> 
> That is my primary qualifier of accuracy.


I must say that I don't get this at all. Could you explain for us--using some empirical data on, say, a quartz watch--how SDs tell us more than do the actual measurements or means of these?

Let me give you an example of how I'd evaluate long-term accuracy("maintainable" accuracy?). I'd (a) start by setting it to precise atomic time, and then (b) test it against atomic time once a month (or perhaps more frequently), prorating the result to annual time (12 months) each time. Suppose, by doing this, I got the following results--each month's actual deviation prorated to 12 months:

Month 1: 3.5 sec./year; Month 2: 3.75 sec./year; 
Month 3: 3.25 sec./year; Month 4: 3.63 sec./year; 
Month 5: 3.38 sec./year; Month 6: 3.55 sec./year;
Month 7: 3.45 sec./year; Month 8: 3.70 sec./year;
Month 9: 3.30 sec./year; Month 10: 3.65 sec./year;
Month 11: 3.60 sec./year; Month 12: 3.40 sec./year;

and, therefore:

Months 1-12: 3.50 secs. total. (Don't concern yourself with how I got these results; let's just say that I took several measurements at the end of each month and averaged them.)

The standard deviation values are: (a) .153 (as a parameter) and (b) .160 (as a parameter estimate). To _some_ extent, these SD values can be seen as indexing measurement error (which is inevitable regardless of how carefully measurements are made). However, the actual data points, and their mean or total, are far more important than month-to-month variation in the prorated values. For example, the fact that, in 12 months, this particular watch gained 3.5 seconds is far more important to the accuracy enthusiast than the monthly wobble in prorated values, unless, I suppose, they were phenomenally large, something that we'd never expect from a quartz watch. In quartz watches, time deviations are almost always part of linear function of time. Standard deviation analysis would have to assume that some significant random factors were at work too, and such a random component--at least in my own observations--is generally negligible.


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## South Pender

Catalin said:


> Second - the more complex method used will probably accelerate the process of measuring the real accuracy with at least one degree of magnitude compared to the 'generic visual' approach - so for instance instead of having to wait for 1-2 years to have some reliable results for the new E510/E410 pair I might get them in two months (including the research on the next point).


Suppose you got results in 2 months using your method. Would you have the same confidence in prorating these to annualized values that you would have in observing the deviation from perfect time after 12 actual months?


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## Catalin

South Pender said:


> Suppose you got results in 2 months using your method. Would you have the same confidence in prorating these to annualized values that you would have in observing the deviation from perfect time after 12 actual months?


Most likely the confidence interval for predicting next 12 months will not be the same but IMHO will not be a lot different either - and actually if we also consider the fact that in this setup I can probably get some better results on keeping 2-3 watches under more constant conditions over two consecutive single months (than if I would try to keep those conditions unchanged for an entire year) I think that the effort is most likely worth it (I really can't see myself wearing just one watch for 1 year or not wearing some of my favorites for an entire year).

I also find very interesting the experiment in itself, and I am also VERY curious how precise the initial two months will be able to predict the results that I'll see at the end of one year ...

Also I would really like to adjust the twin quartz before getting too bored of it ;-)


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## Mechanikus

South Pender said:


> I must say that I don't get this at all. Could you explain for us--using some empirical data on, say, a quartz watch--how SDs tell us more than do the actual measurements or means of these?
> 
> Let me give you an example of how I'd evaluate long-term accuracy("maintainable" accuracy?). I'd (a) start by setting it to precise atomic time, and then (b) test it against atomic time once a month (or perhaps more frequently), prorating the result to annual time (12 months) each time. Suppose, by doing this, I got the following results--each month's actual deviation prorated to 12 months:
> 
> Month 1: 3.5 sec./year; Month 2: 3.75 sec./year;
> Month 3: 3.25 sec./year; Month 4: 3.63 sec./year;
> Month 5: 3.38 sec./year; Month 6: 3.55 sec./year;
> Month 7: 3.45 sec./year; Month 8: 3.70 sec./year;
> Month 9: 3.30 sec./year; Month 10: 3.65 sec./year;
> Month 11: 3.60 sec./year; Month 12: 3.40 sec./year;
> 
> and, therefore:
> 
> Months 1-12: 3.50 secs. total. (Don't concern yourself with how I got these results; let's just say that I took several measurements at the end of each month and averaged them.)
> 
> The standard deviation values are: (a) .153 (as a parameter) and (b) .160 (as a parameter estimate). To _some_ extent, these SD values can be seen as indexing measurement error (which is inevitable regardless of how carefully measurements are made). However, the actual data points, and their mean or total, are far more important than month-to-month variation in the prorated values. For example, the fact that, in 12 months, this particular watch gained 3.5 seconds is far more important to the accuracy enthusiast than the monthly wobble in prorated values, unless, I suppose, they were phenomenally large, something that we'd never expect from a quartz watch. In quartz watches, time deviations are almost always part of linear function of time. Standard deviation analysis would have to assume that some significant random factors were at work too, and such a random component--at least in my own observations--is generally negligible.


I do not want to 'sell' it that is simply my view and I do not want you to adopt it.
For details please visit my site:
http://www.mechanikus.hu/
*Tests* menu item.

Just see the test of 32 tests (one is done by another guy) 919 measurements and the longest run is 7 years.
The pre-qualification to be admitted to the table is one year.
If you click on the type of watch you can see the time series of deviations.

You will see the random effect even in the case of top 10. That is reality.

If you have time take a look to the tuning fork and mechanical tests as well.


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## South Pender

Mechanikus said:


> I do not want to 'sell' it that is simply my view and I do not want you to adopt it.
> For details please visit my site:
> http://www.mechanikus.hu/
> *Tests* menu item.
> 
> Just see the test of 32 tests (one is done by another guy) 919 measurements and the longest run is 7 years.
> The pre-qualification to be admitted to the table is one year.
> If you click on the type of watch you can see the time series of deviations.
> 
> You will see the random effect even in the case of top 10. That is reality.
> 
> If you have time take a look to the tuning fork and mechanical tests as well.


I'd really like to understand your methodology here. When I look at the series of tests with quartz watches, I see two watches at the top of the list (in terms of their standard deviations)--01420 and Longines VHP. For 01420, I see that its monthly average is a loss of 3.89 sec., which would presumably prorate to -46.68 sec./year. In second place, the Longines VHP shows a monthly average of +.50 sec., which prorates to +6.0 seconds per year.

As for the Monthly Standard Deviation values (.465 for 01420 and .503 for Longines VHP), are these the standard deviations of the monthly values over the period of the test (36 months for 01420 and 84 months for Longines VHP)? That is, do you have 36 monthly deviations from perfect time for the 01420 and take both the mean of these and the standard deviation for your reported values?

The graph and table seem to indicate that by your standards, you'd consider 01420 superior in accuracy to Longines VHP. Is this correct?


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## Mechanikus

South Pender said:


> I'd really like to understand your methodology here. When I look at the series of tests with quartz watches, I see two watches at the top of the list (in terms of their standard deviations)--01420 and Longines VHP. For 01420, I see that its monthly average is a loss of 3.89 sec., which would presumably prorate to -46.68 sec./year. In second place, the Longines VHP shows a monthly average of +.50 sec., which prorates to +6.0 seconds per year.
> 
> As for the Monthly Standard Deviation values (.465 for 01420 and .503 for Longines VHP), are these the standard deviations of the monthly values over the period of the test (36 months for 01420 and 84 months for Longines VHP)? That is, do you have 36 monthly deviations from perfect time for the 01420 and take both the mean of these and the standard deviation for your reported values?
> 
> The graph and table seem to indicate that by your standards, you'd consider 01420 superior in accuracy to Longines VHP. Is this correct?


-----------
Methodology is simple:
1./ take the read-outs at certain interval to all tested watches
2./ calculate standard deviation of all series
3./ sort the results in ascending order.

My professor of statistics used to say: "an honest person if tells an average value, tells the standard deviation attached to it as well"

In case of watches the average is not an appropriate measure of performance for two reasons:
a./ a the good, maybe 0 average can be obtained by big differences of unique read-outs, that is what the professor drew attention.
b./ in watch calibres most cases there is an organ to modify the systematic drift that means the average. 

Point b means that average can be calibrated, while deviation is the characteristic of the single piece of the given calibre type.

Your question on comparing O1420 and VHP suggest that it is against your expectations.

I have to admit it is against mine as well but my approach is to respect facts even if that is un-expected. 

I document what I measured. 

That is not a basis to tell the all (or just most) Omega 1420 calibres would be better than all (or just most) L.564.2 (ETA 252.611) calibres. The results I published means only that 'here and now' that piece of O1420 performs better than that piece of ETA 252.611. Not more and not less.

Let me take a step further in the direction you question directs me.

Even in the world of quartz calibres we live in a world ruled by stochastic events. We can experience positive and negative surprises. Several cases 'fortunate' pieces of calibre type of ordinary or even mediocre design can perform very well since they hide themselves under the left 'tail' of Gauss' bell-curve. In my tests Lip (ISA), Casablanca (TMI) and Timex are in top ten to my biggest surprise. On the other hand some example of good, well-designed calibres can show poor performance since they fell under the right 'tail' of the bell-curve. I can show you my O1342 and Seiko King Quartz (4826A).

Moving even further I have to tell you that my working Hypothesis was that more expensive watch is more precise. Test series of mechanical watches convinced me that it is not true among mechanicals. When I arrived to quartz watches that was my last hope to find reasonable positive correlation between price and performance. I have not found it. What is good that the as a tendency it is true that more expensive watches -let us simplify it - are better, but the correlation value is not reaching 0.4.


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## Hans Moleman

I like your approach! :-!

If a certain movement is more stable than another: So be it.
If we can't find an explanation for that: Too bad.
We might find one later.

If we exclude that knowledge because 'it must be a measurement error', we'll never get closer to the truth.

And yes. Stability rules. Without it we would not have a hope in hell.
Standard deviation is a great qualifier for that.


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## Catalin

Mechanikus said:


> -----------
> Methodology is simple:
> 1./ take the read-outs at certain interval to all tested watches
> 2./ calculate standard deviation of all series
> 3./ sort the results in ascending order.
> 
> My professor of statistics used to say: "an honest person if tells an average value, tells the standard deviation attached to it as well"
> 
> In case of watches the average is not an appropriate measure of performance for two reasons:
> a./ a the good, maybe 0 average can be obtained by big differences of unique read-outs, that is what the professor drew attention.
> b./ in watch calibres most cases there is an organ to modify the systematic drift that means the average.
> 
> Point b means that average can be calibrated, while deviation is the characteristic of the single piece of the given calibre type.
> ...


I can see some point to your line of reasoning, but honestly (with the methodology that you are using) I can ONLY see some value of that with mechanical watches.

Your a) assumption above is generally wrong on quartz - the notable exception would be a watch that is COMPLETELY stopped and on which you do random reads - and here is where I say that METHODOLOGY really matters!

The main reason why I say that is since you already 'average' a certain number of things in your measurements, and in quartz watches the influence of at least one of those - temperature - can be easily be bigger than the actual 'averaged error' that you measure AND also bigger than your measurement accuracy!

Case in point - Omega 1420 vs Longines VHP vs. Omega 1510 - last two are TC or TC-like calibers (and I find very funny that on your 1510 graph you actually can see the difference in temperature from summer to winter) yet for some strange reason on the far less accurate 1420 the numbers fail to see the MUCH bigger influence of temperature ... since as I told before - the averaging PLUS the reporting to a MUCH higher error is hiding that !!!

You might try to suggest that 1420 is a more 'predictable' caliber (while VHP and 1510 are more accurate but less predictable) - but that is NOT true - if you send those 3 to an 'impartial' observer (which however takes ONE indication from me on whether to keep the watches at 20 or 30 degrees Celsius) together with your prediction for the end of a 12 months test I can ALWAYS make your prediction VASTLY wrong for the 1420 - by picking one of the two temperature points - which however will most likely have an entire degree of magnitude LESS influence on VHP or 1510 ... so in other words 1420 SEEMS more predictable in certain conditions of averaging temperatures, but it is actually not so predictable once you do very accurate measurements on non-averaged temperatures ...

That being said I CAN see good value in using standard deviation ONCE YOU HAVE A MEASUREMENT ACCURACY OF AT LEAST ONE DEGREE OF MAGNITUDE BETTER THAN THE ERROR THAT YOU ARE MEASURING !!!


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## Mechanikus

Catalin said:


> I can see some point to your line of reasoning, but honestly (with the methodology that you are using) I can ONLY see some value of that with mechanical watches.
> 
> Your a) assumption above is generally wrong on quartz - the notable exception would be a watch that is COMPLETELY stopped and on which you do random reads - and here is where I say that METHODOLOGY really matters!
> 
> The main reason why I say that is since you already 'average' a certain number of things in your measurements, and in quartz watches the influence of at least one of those - temperature - can be easily be bigger than the actual 'averaged error' that you measure AND also bigger than your measurement accuracy!
> 
> Case in point - Omega 1420 vs Longines VHP vs. Omega 1510 - last two are TC calibers (and I find very funny that on your 1510 graph you actually can see the difference in temperature from summer to winter) yet for some strange reason on the far less accurate 1420 the numbers fail to see the MUCH bigger influence of temperature ... since as I told before - the averaging PLUS the reporting to a MUCH higher error is hiding that !!!
> 
> You might try to suggest that 1420 is a more 'predictable' caliber (while VHP and 1510 are more accurate but less predictable) - but that is NOT true - if you send those 3 to an 'impartial' observer (which however takes ONE indication from me on whether to keep the watches at 20 or 30 degrees Celsius) together with your prediction for the end of a 12 months test I can ALWAYS make your prediction VASTLY wrong for the 1420 - by picking one of the two temperature points - which however will most likely have an entire degree of magnitude LESS influence on VHP or 1510 ... so in other words 1420 SEEMS more predictable in certain conditions of averaging temperatures, but it is actually not so predictable once you do very accurate measurements on non-averaged temperatures ...
> 
> That being said I CAN see good value in using standard deviation ONCE YOU HAVE A MEASUREMENT ACCURACY OF AT LEAST ONE DEGREE OF MAGNITUDE BETTER THAN THE ERROR THAT YOU ARE MEASURING !!!


-----------------
Saying that:
"_That being said I CAN see good value in using standard deviation ONCE YOU HAVE A MEASUREMENT ACCURACY OF AT LEAST ONE DEGREE OF MAGNITUDE BETTER THAN THE ERROR THAT YOU ARE MEASURING !!!_ "
you are right...

... but please realise the time base I use the signal of atomic clocks transferred via radio is AT LEAST ONE DEGREE OF MAGNITUDE BETTER THAN THE watches I qualify.

What is true my results cannot directly be compared to any other results obtained using some other method. Anyway that is true for any standardised measurement methods. That is why I carry out a lot of measurement to have statistical amount of data to end up with reliable results among the given constraints.

Regarding temperature effect:
Same location same chances - The HEQs except Spring Drive are sitting in the same wooden box in the same house of fairly stable temperature.

Regarding special nature of quartz watches.
I do not see why would the quartz watch be a different than other products of engineering. I see that the different types of errors are present even in case of HEQs no matter how small those errors are:
- systematic error - e.g. the drift
- stochastic error - for what we do not find systematic reason behind

------
Dear All,

Let me tell you something in general.

0. I do not think I am right or what I say is better than of others.
1. I do not want to convince anybody.
2. I do not criticise anyone.
3. What I do is might be rare: I show what I found 'sine ira at studio'

Finally I believe if we meet a side of reality we have not seen before we should not deny its existence rather think about why it is like that.


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## Mechanikus

Hans Moleman said:


> I like your approach! :-!
> 
> If a certain movement is more stable than another: So be it.
> If we can't find an explanation for that: Too bad.
> We might find one later.
> 
> If we exclude that knowledge because 'it must be a measurement error', we'll never get closer to the truth.
> 
> And yes. Stability rules. Without it we would not have a hope in hell.
> Standard deviation is a great qualifier for that.


I am happy you agree with my approach.

Please tell me more about this sentence since I do not understand what you are pointing at:

"_If we exclude that knowledge because 'it must be a measurement error', we'll never get closer to the truth_."


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## Hans Moleman

Mechanikus said:


> I am happy you agree with my approach.
> 
> Please tell me more about this sentence since I do not understand what you are pointing at:
> 
> "_If we exclude that knowledge because 'it must be a measurement error', we'll never get closer to the truth_."


I meant that all measurements should be included even if they look odd.
It is quite tempting to throw those away since they don't fit the current theories. If those theories are wrong however, they will never be exposed as wrong, since all measurements fit so nicely. Better theories don't have any chance in such a way of thinking.
You'll get into a vicious circle of only looking at things you want to see.

Keep on open mind, as you do, and you'll get a lot further.

Actually, I would go one step further:
If I would see measurements that exactly fit the theory, I am sure they have been doctored!

You've got a scientific approach, stick to it!


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## Catalin

Mechanikus said:


> -----------------
> Saying that:
> "_That being said I CAN see good value in using standard deviation ONCE YOU HAVE A MEASUREMENT ACCURACY OF AT LEAST ONE DEGREE OF MAGNITUDE BETTER THAN THE ERROR THAT YOU ARE MEASURING !!!_ "
> you are right...
> 
> ... but please realise the time base I use the signal of atomic clocks transferred via radio is AT LEAST ONE DEGREE OF MAGNITUDE BETTER THAN THE watches I qualify.
> ...


You misunderstood my point - the point was not that the atomic radio clock was not accurate enough, the point was that 'comparing two watches by naked eye' is not so reliable and only has an accuracy in the range of 0.5-1.0 seconds - that is perfect if you compare errors in the range of two degrees of magnitude better (100s/month like mechanicals), it is still very good (and undetectable in the numbers) when you compare errors in the range of 10s/month (one degree of magnitude) but once you get in the same range of 1 second/month the standard deviation starts to show more the degree of randomness in the measurement than the degree of randomness in the error that you measure !!! (and I wonder if the results don't actually show that the Omega 1420 is simply more accurate to measure with under-1-second accuracy).

That being said your results are by far the most comprehensive long-term averaged constant-condition set available on the net and most likely are rather reliable and scientific - except on this matter when we differ in the INTERPRETATION on what the standard deviation shows on under 1s/month measurements ...

The other thing that puzzles me a little is that we can see the slight variation from summer to winter on the graph of the 1510 and to some extent for the SpringDrive, but not for the 1420, Timex or Lip - where we know that the variation should be even bigger ... this might be showing that the length of the interval (or some part of the setup of the experiment) is averaging the results in a way that selectively hides some of the information ...

That being said your have convinced me that on my own tests I should also look at the standard deviation ;-)


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## Mechanikus

Catalin said:


> You misunderstood my point - the point was not that the atomic radio clock was not accurate enough, the point was that 'comparing two watches by naked eye' is not so reliable and only has an accuracy in the range of 0.5-1.0 seconds - that is perfect if you compare errors in the range of two degrees of magnitude better (100s/month like mechanicals), it is still very good (and undetectable in the numbers) when you compare errors in the range of 10s/month (one degree of magnitude) but once you get in the same range of 1 second/month the standard deviation starts to show more the degree of randomness in the measurement than the degree of randomness in the error that you measure !!! (and I wonder if the results don't actually show that the Omega 1420 is simply more accurate to measure with under-1-second accuracy).
> 
> That being said your results are by far the most comprehensive long-term averaged constant-condition set available on the net and most likely are rather reliable and scientific - except on this matter when we differ in the INTERPRETATION on what the standard deviation shows on under 1s/month measurements ...
> 
> The other thing that puzzles me a little is that we can see the slight variation from summer to winter on the graph of the 1510 and to some extent for the SpringDrive, but not for the 1420, Timex or Lip - where we know that the variation should be even bigger ... this might be showing that the length of the interval (or some part of the setup of the experiment) is averaging the results in a way that selectively hides some of the information ...
> 
> That being said your have convinced me that on my own tests I should also look at the standard deviation ;-)


First of all I am very happy that you think it is worth while taking into account standard deviation as analysis method.

To tell the truth you are right that the standard deviation is very sensitive to the error of read-out (reading only full second). 
That can be eliminated by long series of data that is why I test the best ones for several years. After 7 years the result of VHP is very reliable but even the 3 years of Omega 1420 is a good basis. On the other hand the 26 month of Omega 1510 was just enough to see how the 'old-champion' can perform after more than 35 years.


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## Catalin

Mechanikus said:


> First of all I am very happy that you think it is worth while taking into account standard deviation as analysis method.
> 
> To tell the truth you are right that the standard deviation is very sensitive to the error of read-out (reading only full second).
> That can be eliminated by long series of data that is why I test the best ones for several years. After 7 years the result of VHP is very reliable but even the 3 years of Omega 1420 is a good basis. On the other hand the 26 month of Omega 1510 was just enough to see how the 'old-champion' can perform after more than 35 years.


I have collected the raw data (the movies) yesterday on the 21st and tomorrow I will try to start for myself a long-term 'database' for that and eventually post some quick numbers - but my feeling is that the info will start to look somehow interesting only after the 3rd interval (on the 31st most likely) - and actually much better than that at the very end of February when I will also have some 'less averaged' data regarding the relation with the temperature ...


----------



## Eeeb

Ooooooohhhhhhhh DATA!


----------



## Mechanikus

Eeeb said:


> Ooooooohhhhhhhh DATA!


I hope that your remark is not ironocal.

During my years at GE may favourite poster was on the wall of a Six Sigma Master Black Belt:
"*In God we trust all else MUST bring data*."

According that principle I have been gathering them. You can find hundreds (on quartz watches) and thousands (on mechanical, tuning forks, electricals) on my page.


----------



## Catalin

Mechanikus said:


> I hope that your remark is not ironocal.
> 
> During my years at GE may favourite poster was on the wall of a Six Sigma Master Black Belt:
> "*In God we trust all else MUST bring data*."
> 
> According that principle I have been gathering them. You can find hundreds (on quartz watches) and thousands (on mechanical, tuning forks, electricals) on my page.


Actually I believe that's the same thing he is trying to suggest ;-)


----------



## Catalin

*Some data ...*

I was not very certain about the data until I saw the numbers on the E410 and the non-TC model :-d

http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20100121.pdf

For people that don't care too much to look inside - so far a ladies models kicked the ass of 7 male-model watches :-d

I am myself a little surprised in the results of the first E510 - I knew it was over 10s/y, but it seems to be a LOT more than I thought ... we'll see again in a few months ...

The theory is that for each model and interval the annual drift is calculated, also a separate total annual drift is calculated (not by averaging interval annual drift, but instead by adding interval drifts and reporting to the sum of interval days); on the list of 'interval annual drift' standard deviation is also calculated.

It is already rather visible that the standard deviation is very relevant in absolute value only when comparing results with IDENTICAL METHODOLOGY - so my results are not directly comparable for instance with _Mechanikus_'s data. I am not even 100% certain on the impact of the variable-length interval on standard deviation inside my own methodology, so I will have only one other 10-day interval and after that I will do precise 2-weeks intervals (and see after 4-5 months if I have to discard the first 3 intervals).

The last digit (milliseconds) in the timing data is almost certainly inaccurate, and maybe even the tens of milliseconds could be 1-2 off, but the format aims to be future-friendly for times when much better internet connections, much faster computers with ultra-fast monitor refresh rates and fast video cameras will become 'standard' :-d

UPDATE: - I went back and checked the internal timing/date on the movies for all the watches - my initial memory was that 4 watches were timed in 2010-01-01 and 4 on 2010-01-02, but the numbers were suggesting that something was wrong - and indeed I have done 6 watches in the first day and only 2 in the second - the standard deviation changed dramatically after fixing that for the twinquartz and 5E31 ;-)


----------



## Eeeb

Catalin said:


> Actually I believe that's the same thing he is trying to suggest ;-)


It is indeed. I think this is the only forum where data is properly valued :-!


----------



## Karma

HI All,
Whew, you folks are on the outer edges of watch mania. However, I very much respect the effort you are making. You are seeking to detect and record critical time data that varies in the microsecond and millisecond range. You are making this attempt without opening the watch thus gaining access to the critical timing pulses which could be easily measured with standard test equipment such as oscilloscopes and frequency counters which would allow you to measure the basic, corrected, clock signal. Certainly the watch factories use the internal signals, along with specialized purpose designed test equipment, when characterizing their movements. The task you have set for yourselves is much more difficult and frought with many traps. I want to learn from you.

My questions moves this discussion back to the very beginning. How exactly are you making your measurements? For example, I use WWV as my standard but because of a lack of a specialized time signal receiver and decoder (back to this in a moment) that would provide timing pulses to control the measuring instrumentation, I must perform by eye and ear. I know I can't record information much better than within 1 sec with any degree of reliability.

My crude methods work well for mechanical watches where their accuracy is much worse (usually) than my measurement error. For a single measurement the error could be as much as 1 sec. For series of controlled measurements (say 28 days; my standard mesurement suite), this averages out and is swamped by the error of the watch itself. Thus, I have confidence that I have characterized the movement to a satisfactory degree. This scheme even works with standard quartz movements (usually).

But for the work you are doing my method is totally inadequate. So, I need a much better method to characterize HQ movements. I assume you have developed such methods. Otherwise your work will prove futile.

What I need is, to repeat, how EXACTLY, do you make your measurements. I need a block diagram of your test setup. I need to know the technical capabilities of your equipment (if possible, the make and model). I need a description of your test procedure, in detail. I need to know the philosophy of your methodology. I need to know the goals of the measurement technique. I need to know the expected error envelope.

Am I asking a lot? You bet and I know it. However, unless you provide such information, this discussion is essentially worthless to those of us that want to join you on your quest and understand your results. In industry, what I have asked is provided as standard practice for any research (your work) that is published (this forum) and peer reviewed (us, your readers).

Thanks Very Much,

Sparky


----------



## Catalin

Sorry about missing that when starting this thread (there was another much longer one where it was however described) - I have included in the top post some info on how that is done ...


----------



## Mechanikus

*Re: Some data ...*



Catalin said:


> I was not very certain about the data until I saw the numbers on the E410 and the non-TC model :-d
> 
> http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20100121.pdf
> 
> For people that don't care too much to look inside - so far a ladies models kicked the ass of 7 male-model watches :-d
> 
> I am myself a little surprised in the results of the first E510 - I knew it was over 10s/y, but it seems to be a LOT more than I thought ... we'll see again in a few months ...
> 
> The theory is that for each model and interval the annual drift is calculated, also a separate total annual drift is calculated (not by averaging interval annual drift, but instead by adding interval drifts and reporting to the sum of interval days); on the list of 'interval annual drift' standard deviation is also calculated.
> 
> It is already rather visible that the standard deviation is very relevant in absolute value only when comparing results with IDENTICAL METHODOLOGY - so my results are not directly comparable for instance with _Mechanikus_'s data. I am not even 100% certain on the impact of the variable-length interval on standard deviation inside my own methodology, so I will have only one other 10-day interval and after that I will do precise 2-weeks intervals (and see after 4-5 months if I have to discard the first 3 intervals).
> 
> The last digit (milliseconds) in the timing data is almost certainly inaccurate, and maybe even the tens of milliseconds could be 1-2 off, but the format aims to be future-friendly for times when much better internet connections, much faster computers with ultra-fast monitor refresh rates and fast video cameras will become 'standard' :-d
> 
> UPDATE: - I went back and checked the internal timing/date on the movies for all the watches - my initial memory was that 4 watches were timed in 2010-01-01 and 4 on 2010-01-02, but the numbers were suggesting that something was wrong - and indeed I have done 6 watches in the first day and only 2 in the second - the standard deviation changed dramatically after fixing that for the twinquartz and 5E31 ;-)


Hi Catalin,

You are right we use quite different approach to measure accuracy.

That is why I am really interested in your measuring setup. If you could post some picture it had been interesting to most of us.


----------



## Karma

*More, Much More Is Needed*

Hi Catalin,
Thanks for your reply. Look, I don't want to seem ungrateful because I'm not. But your post add-on only scratches the surface of what is needed in the way of test documentation. You should be thinking in terms of how we, who you are writing to, can duplicate or even improve on your methodology. This is the nature of science.

Reread my first post. Compare to what you have provided. Imagine me trying to duplicate your test. I think you will see that your response is inadequate for that purpose. For example (only one), what exactly are you photographing?

I do realize that you probably don't have much interest in spending the time to do this right. At least that is what I see so far. But, frankly, my impression is that you are not experienced with making your work public in a way that it can be confirmed. Is your measurement work any better? I hope so but I'm not convinced. Too many variables that you have no control over is my first impression. Another example, how do you calculate and verify all of the error factors? I don't know. IOW, how do you determine your error envelope?

I do not intend to bully you to get this right. That would be counterproductive and beyond the intent of a forum. I won't do it. I want to understand something that you have obviously put a lot of thought and time into. I can't read your mind. It will only happen if you sincerely wish to have others confirm and understand what you are doing.

I suggest that you commit yourself to write a full-up test procedure complete with the necessary drawings, calculations, and specifications with the intent of publishing it on the web. Leave nothing out. This can be a very disciplined way of checking yourself and your activity even if you never publish it. Good measurement and test processes require this kind of discipline. I almost always improve my work when I do this. Never forget the fiasco of cold fusion; a perfect example of uncontrolled experimentation.

But, you say, "this is only a hobby". True. But you have gone public and now you owe your public your inner thoughts. There is no way around it.

Thanks, Sparky


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Some data ...*



Mechanikus said:


> Hi Catalin,
> 
> You are right we use quite different approach to measure accuracy.
> 
> That is why I am really interested in your measuring setup. If you could post some picture it had been interesting to most of us.


It boils down primarily to the frame-rate of your monitor and secondarily to the camera you are using to make the 'mini-movies' - here are two frames extracted which 'catch' the rather precise moment when the seconds hand is moving (enlarge the picture a little and see that the seconds hand apparently is in two positions - I normally get something like that for each watch if I have 3-4 small movies of 10-20 seconds each; the frames just before and after those two show a perfectly still/clear seconds hand).




























If you read the time you can see that the computer time (sync to atomic on internet with better than 10 ms precision - see my references to a freeware called AboutTime) is ahead of the new position of the Seiko with about 0.158 seconds - so that's how I got the -0.158 error for the 8F56 on 2010.01.21 ...

My current methodology is to either find a few such frames where the seconds-hand is caught moving and use the value displayed on that frame(s), or if that is not possible I try to average among the highest millisecond value displayed just before the seconds hand moves and the lowest millisecond value displayed immediately after the seconds hand moved.

The program behind is called EarthSunX - this is a new beta I am still working on - and I will make it available for free to members of the forum that want to do their own timing tests and post the results on the web ...


----------



## Catalin

Karma said:


> ...
> Reread my post. Compare to what you have provided. Imagine me trying to duplicate your test. I think you will see that your response is inadequate for that purpose. For example (only one), what exactly are you photographing?
> ...


I am not still-photographing, I am making a movie with my old digital camera (today rather low-end) - see a few posts below for two frames extracted from one of the movies.

And my goal (other than getting some info on my own watches) is to show that the process is rather simple (even if in some conditions rather time-consuming) and probably most people here will be able to repeat it with results at least as good as mine - with the final goal of getting some more reliable data posted here or on the web.


----------



## Eeeb

Here is how I do it...  the Citizen CQT-101 ... does not always work for inhibition periods more than 1 minute however. (The second one I was going to modify to try to handle this got crushed in the delivery process... RIP.)


----------



## Hans Moleman

Eeeb said:


> Here is how I do it...  the Citizen CQT-101 ... does not always work for inhibition periods more than 1 minute however. (The second one I was going to modify to try to handle this got crushed in the delivery process... RIP.)


There aren't many machines for the serious (!) watch enthusiast:
http://www.witschi.com/e/produkte/
http://www.vibrografusa.com/watch_timers.html

No idea how accurate they are.
And even for a watch maker quite an investment.


----------



## Catalin

Hans Moleman said:


> There aren't many machines for the serious (!) watch enthusiast:
> http://www.witschi.com/e/produkte/
> http://www.vibrografusa.com/watch_timers.html
> 
> No idea how accurate they are.
> And even for a watch maker quite an investment.


I also believe that all the non-atomic machines need to be calibrated every 1-2 years to keep the accuracy relevant.

The other thing is that the machine is perfect for a quick measurement at a given temperature, but can not directly do an 'average over one week of normal wearing pattern' ...


----------



## webvan

*Re: Some data ...*



Catalin said:


> The program behind is called EarthSunX - this is a new beta I am still working on - and I will make it available for free to members of the forum that want to do their own timing tests and post the results on the web ...


Looking forward to that, any ETA ? ;-) I will then whip out my Sony HDV that has an ultra fast FPS mode, 360/s I think.


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Some data ...*



webvan said:


> Looking forward to that, any ETA ? ;-) I will then whip out my Sony HDV that has an ultra fast FPS mode, 360/s I think.


Unfortunately not yet in my collection, but I am looking into that ;-)

However that is part of the entire point - other people could do similar tests with other calibers and models ... I am quite curious for instance how things will look with a SpringDrive at a few temperatures ...

I believe the FPS matters a lot more on the monitor than on the camera, but even at 60 FPS things look very nice ... at 120 FPS monitor and camera it might already be more of a limit in how good is the internet connection to the atomic watch ...


----------



## Karma

HI Catalin,
Thanks for the follow up. I think I understand what you are doing. It's a pretty clever idea. Due to the low quality of the downloaded pictures, I had a difficult time identifying the hand movement you describe. But, I believe you can do it with higher quality pictures. It seems like a labor intensive method. But, what the hell. It's only time, right? 

I have always thought that an optical method would work. You are actually doing it. Pretty neat.

I can't suggest anything better.

Thanks Again, Sparky


----------



## Catalin

The program I use for my timing tests can be now found at:

http://caranfil.org/timing/setup_earthsunx_230_122_beta.exe

You will note that the 'main window' stays normally hidden and can be shown with either a click on it or just 'hoovering' with the mouse over it (there is a setting to configure that) - normally the milliseconds are not shown,but if on activation either SHIFT or CTRL is pressed the 'millisecond mode' is activated. If both SHIFT and CTRL are pressed the 'seconds beep' mode is also activated. See below a post with pictures from the mini-movies I am using for timing tests.


----------



## webvan

Thanks for the app, will try it this week-end. For some reason I didn't get notified but found following another link today!


----------



## Mechanikus

uktrailmonster said:


> Am I missing something here? If you just synchronise your watches with an atomic clock and check them again a month later, you'll get results accurate to within a few hundredths of a second per day. What more are you hoping to achieve?


I think we are not talking about the same thing. My approach is different from most members of the HEQ Forum who are interested the actual yearly rate of HEQ watches. That is an important but not the only possible characteristic of a watch.

I am rather interested in long-term stability. That is why my focus is on the standard deviation of the monthly deviations on a long run.
For that reason I have a pre-qualification of one year and start considering the results as stable after 3 years.
Over five years I can also tell something reasonable about yearly rate as well.

Calculating the yearly rates based on very sophisticated thermal test is extremely interesting prediction.
I honestly admire the devotion and the results:
https://www.watchuseek.com/showthread.php?p=1736994#poststop

Since the physics (including stochastic processes) and technology inside a HEQ watch are too complicated to be described precisely by a simple model there is room for different approaches.

What my *patient long-term tests* show are the real results in certain conditions.

The fact I do not test the variation of accuracy as a function of temperature is often and rightly criticised. 
Obviously my approach is not perfect either. 
Frankly speaking I doubt that the importance of temperature change in everyday life would be so important. I am not convinced either that acceleration resistance or water resistance would be really important in real situations as people wear their HEQ watches. That is why I asked Forum members to tell how do they wear their HEQ watches:

https://www.watchuseek.com/showthread.php?t=351891

So far 8 people do not expose it to extreme conditions, one wear it in the gym (some degrees of temperature change due to sweating and the acceleration of his arms) another person wears them while riding bike. That suggests me that the real wearing condition of most HEQ watches is rather of dress watch.

Coming back to the different approaches I believe the most interesting thing is to compare the results produced by them.

Now you surely agree with me that in the course of a long term test:
-	the rounding to a second at read-outs are compensating each other on long run
-	rounding leads to a higher calculated "error" that means the conclusion drawn upon is rather on the 'safe side'.


----------



## Hans Moleman

Mechanikus said:


> Frankly speaking I doubt that the importance of temperature change in everyday life would be so important. I am not convinced either that acceleration resistance or water resistance would be really important in real situations as people wear their HEQ watches. That is why I asked Forum members to tell how do they wear their HEQ watches:
> 
> https://www.watchuseek.com/showthread.php?t=351891
> 
> So far 8 people do not expose it to extreme conditions, one wear it in the gym (some degrees of temperature change due to sweating and the acceleration of his arms) another person wears them while riding bike. That suggests me that the real wearing condition of most HEQ watches is rather of dress watch.


I don't entirely agree: 
Temperature variations are small while wearing a watch. None of us works in a steel mill, none of the watches is exposed to temperature extremes. That's correct.

But don't forget the substantial change in temperature when you take the watch off. 
I for one take it off overnight if I want it to slow down.
It slows down by 15 ms a night in the winter; less in summer.
And that consistently. 
Others seem to 'cheat' the same way. It is a simple way to keep the offset very small.

I should have mentioned that in your questionnaire. I did not know you wanted these details.

Your measurements hold real value. 
A watch without TC suffers larger spikes up and down caused by temperature. If temperature variations are ignored, those spikes will end up in the 'random' 'unexplained' basket and will make the watch less stable in your tests.
The quality added by having TC will show up.
Eventually.


----------



## Catalin

Hans Moleman said:


> ...
> But don't forget the substantial change in temperature when you take the watch off.
> I for one take it off overnight if I want it to slow down.
> It slows down by 15 ms a night in the winter; less in summer.
> And that consistently.
> Others seem to 'cheat' the same way. It is a simple way to keep the offset very small.
> ...
> A watch without TC suffers larger spikes up and down caused by temperature. If temperature variations are ignored, those spikes will end up in the 'random' 'unexplained' basket and will make the watch less stable in your tests.
> The quality added by having TC will show up.
> Eventually.


Guilty as charged on the first matter - I do something similar on the 8F56 by leaving in a slightly warmer spot.

I tend to disagree a little on the second matter - if you average over a long enough time in very constant ways and with not enough accuracy on the measurements the TC part can become less obvious - I am very curious on how things will look on my tests after the second month when I force a different average temperature ...


----------



## Eeeb

There is much data out there in the real world to explore. And there are clearly different vectors that can be taken on that exploration.

All honest explorations tell us something. Those explorers who report on their trips are greatly admired. Thanks!!


----------



## webvan

webvan said:


> Thanks for the app, will try it this week-end. For some reason I didn't get notified but found following another link today!


Gave it a try tonight with my 4 HEQs, I'm impressed! 
1. Sync with AboutTime - get 2ms accuracy
2. Bring EarthSunx to the front with Shift+click then click on on picture
3. Shoot 10 seconds with Panansonic TZ7
4. Review frame by frame

Much more accurate than my previous "eye" timing but I don't want to reset my watches so I'll check the difference going forward.

Will revisit next week, no need to wait for a month now! Thanks again for sharing :-!


----------



## Catalin

webvan said:


> Gave it a try tonight with my 4 HEQs, I'm impressed!
> 1. Sync with AboutTime - get 2ms accuracy
> 2. Bring EarthSunx to the front with Shift+click then click on on picture
> 3. Shoot 10 seconds with Panansonic TZ7
> 4. Review frame by frame
> 
> Much more accurate than my previous "eye" timing but I don't want to reset my watches so I'll check the difference going forward.
> 
> Will revisit next week, no need to wait for a month now! Thanks again for sharing :-!


You seem to have a lower-latency internet connection than me 

I am also myself always 'checking the difference going forward'.

I believe good results can also be seen after only one week - however with such shorter interval it can also be important to note the hour when the measurement was done and compute the interval at hour-level precision (I have settled myself on two weeks since I was loosing too much time and also on the long term it seems to be easier to assume late on Sunday I will be always more likely to be able to get one hour for this project even in the summer or so).


----------



## Catalin

*2010-01-31*

Latest data available at:

http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20100131.pdf

The results are somehow a little surprising on the E510/E510/E410 trio, most likely suggesting a rather more serious thermal change (which I believe might have taken place indeed, but why wasn't the 8F56 also influenced ? those 4 were near a window which was opened seriously more for a few days, and outside was indeed very cold; 8F56 and the Ti E510 were on the warm router while the new E510/E410 pair was on a simple plastic holder).

The twinquartz seems waaay to tricky to get any serious results after regulation, but we'll see ...

The other 3 were rather OK.

Just after those tests the E510/E410 pair was moved on the warm router, and also the twinquartz ...


----------



## South Pender

Interesting results, Catalin. It appears that you have attempted to simulate (a) wearing temperatures (27-31C) and (b) storing temperatures (19-23C). However, I don't understand your point about Ti E510 and 8F56 being subjected to a "serious thermal change." In your comments, you indicate that they were at 27-31C through the trial. Unless I'm missing something here, your results really don't quite allow you to assert too much about the effects of temperature change on any of the movements, although you might be tempted to speculate from the results with the E510/E510/E410, which seem to suggest that they prefer the lower (storage) temperatures. This is not dispositive, however, and a new set of trials with the temperatures reversed in this set of three will be far more definitive wrt to temperature sensitivity.

It will be interesting to see how the Twin Quartz performs at wearing temperature (27-31C). It might look a lot better! Still, if it is, it won't say anything positive for the function-flattening effects of the twin quartz technology.

I had one question: How were the standard deviations calculated? Let me take a guess, and you can use this as the basis for your answer: You took error values each day during the 30-day trial period for each movement and calculated the mean and standard deviation for each distribution of the 30 (daily-measurement) data points. Is the standard deviation value reported referenced to the trial period or the annualized figure?

In any case, nice work. This is very valuable research.


----------



## Catalin

South Pender said:


> Interesting results, Catalin. It appears that you have attempted to simulate (a) wearing temperatures (27-31C) and (b) storing temperatures (19-23C). However, I don't understand your point about Ti E510 and 8F56 being subjected to a "serious thermal change." In your comments, you indicate that they were at 27-31C through the trial.
> ...
> 
> I had one question: How were the standard deviations calculated? Let me take a guess, and you can use this as the basis for your answer: You took error values each day during the 30-day trial period for each movement and calculated the mean and standard deviation for each distribution of the 30 (daily-measurement) data points. Is the standard deviation value reported referenced to the trial period or the annualized figure?


The temperature range is there only as a general hint of the average (and more to remind me where the watches were placed, in the previous version it was just a mention about 'warm'), but the extremes might have been slightly different from one interval to the other ...

The standard deviation is using an Excel/OpenOffice formula which takes as input a range of values - in my case the input values are the (currently only 3) values for the 'Annual drift' column ... that might be slightly inaccurate since that formula assumes identical intervals (and as such the average is a little different from the actual average that is displayed at the top which is using the actual effective number of days - but the difference is smaller than 0.5% so it should not be visible in the first 2 digits or so - we'll see in 3-4 months with 2-weeks fixed intervals if I will have to drop those first 3 slightly variable intervals ...)


----------



## South Pender

Catalin said:


> The temperature range is there only as a general hint of the average (and more to remind me where the watches were placed, in the previous version it was just a mention about 'warm'), but the extremes might have been slightly different from one interval to the other ...
> 
> The standard deviation is using an Excel/OpenOffice formula which takes as input a range of values - in my case the input values are the (currently only 3) values for the 'Annual drift' column ... that might be slightly inaccurate since that formula assumes identical intervals (and as such the average is a little different from the actual average that is displayed at the top which is using the actual effective number of days - but the difference is smaller than 0.5% so it should not be visible in the first 2 digits or so - we'll see in 3-4 months with 2-weeks fixed intervals if I will have to drop those first 3 slightly variable intervals ...)


OK. With respect to the standard deviation values reported:

1. What do they tell you? Or, more specifically, to what factors do you attribute these numbers?

2. With very, very small numbers of data points employed in their calculation (here only 3), these figures are _*extremely unstable*_.

*(a) Example 1*. With SBQJ015 as an example, if, instead of dividing the 30 days of the trial into three parts, you'd used two parts (Days 1-15 and 16-30), the standard deviation (via linear interpolation) would have been 1.29, rather than the .5684 you reported. If you'd divided the 30 days into four parts (Days 1-7.499; 7.501-14.999; 15.001-22.499; and 22.501-30), your standard deviation would have been 1.13 (again assuming a linear interpolation is a good fit).

*(b) Example 2.* Again with SBQJ015, if I set a 95% confidence interval around your reported value of .5684, we find that, in the population, we can state that this value could be as little as .30 and as large as 3.57 with 95% confidence.

We just have far, far too few values for these standard deviation estimates to provide stable estimates of their parameters. As a result, they just cannot be taken seriously at all. The annual drift values, on the other hand, are relatively stable and are meaningful.

3. How are we to know a "good" standard deviation when we see one? The interval or pro-rated, annualized drift figures are self-explanatory, but is .5684 a _low_ standard deviation (where low is better)? What I'm getting at here is that we have no interpretable metric with which to understand these figures.

What I've stated above is similar in many ways to my response to Mechanikus's extensive use of the standard deviation in his timing work. In Mechanikus's case, he goes even further, maintaining that the standard deviation is _the most important_ index of accuracy. I've disagreed with this in another thread. My Point 3 above is, I think, quite relevant to both your timing report and those of Mechanikus. With drift or averaged, or annualized, deviation (or drift) figures, the numbers have immediate interpretive value and meaning. With standard deviations, about all we could say about them is that lower is better and could, perhaps (under closely-controlled conditions) use them comparatively (as long as the sampling error--which is huge with standard deviations--is taken into account as I did above with the confidence intervals). In absolute terms, however, at present they have little interpretive value.


----------



## Catalin

South Pender said:


> OK. With respect to the standard deviation values reported:
> 
> 1. What do they tell you? Or, more specifically, to what factors do you attribute these numbers?
> 
> 2. With very, very small numbers of data points employed in their calculation (here only 3), these figures are _*extremely unstable*_.
> ...


Well, OF COURSE standard deviation would become more meaningful with 10-20 data points, however the other major choice would have been to NOT post any results until I get 10-20 data points :-d - in this scenario at least we all get to see how the values change after each interval !!! (see the previous PDF which was not removed specifically for this reason).

The standard deviation in my opinion is a good indicator on how well the measured values are grouped together near the average - the values themselves have the same measurement unit as the values that take part in calculation (in this case seconds drift per year) and at a very simplistic level it tells that that we have good confidence that we will find future values in the range AVG - STDDEV to AVG + STDDEV ...

As I mentioned before the numerical values of the standard deviation are influenced by methodology and also the accuracy of the measurement but values should certainly be directly comparable inside a similar set - for instance the first 4 watches in my own results are visibly in a completely different class than the next two - but DO NOT READ TOO MUCH in the current values since my methodology is also placing serious value in how the timing is at the other extreme of a normal wearing pattern !!!

In other words my prediction is that the 8F56 will show close to +16s/y during the next two intervals - and that will place the average somewhere closer to ZERO but the standard deviation at an actually higher value than right now !!!

I am VERY curious myself on the results on the 3 Exceeds and the twinquartz which all now will see a different average temperature than the 3 previous intervals.

The 8F33, 5E31 and also the 7223 will go on the warm router in March, and that will most likely show some changes - I find REALLY funny the fact that the 7223 (which is a totally ordinary quartz guaranteed by Seiko in 1980 when was launched at 15s/month) looks right now both INCREDIBLY accurate AND very consistent, and that the old 8F33 is in the latest numbers the MOST CONSISTENT of ALL the watches in the test ;-)


----------



## Hans Moleman

Your the man!
Some cheap advice from the sidelines:
Spend some time on getting your data in a graph.
You'll quickly be snowed under in your data.
A graph makes everything a lot easier to see.

Its a real pain to get going, but worth it.


----------



## South Pender

Catalin said:


> Well, OF COURSE standard deviation would become more meaningful with 10-20 data points, however the other major choice would have been to NOT post any results until I get 10-20 data points :-d


It's not simply a matter of degree. There are data-analytic situations in which certain results are completely uninformative, whereas others are informative and meaningful--in varying degrees. This is one of those situations. The confidence interval I provided for your first data set illustrates this. It indicates that the true parameter value for this watch at this temperature could actually be as low as .30 sec. or as high as 3.57 sec. Perhaps a better example is EBJ74-1742, where your reported standard deviation value of 2.2209 can be seen (because of such a tiny sample of observation points) as estimating a parameter that could range from 1.16 and 13.96. That is, there is some reasonable chance that its parameter standard deviation is actually _smaller_ that that of SBQJ015.



Catalin said:


> The standard deviation in my opinion is a good indicator on how well the measured values are grouped together near the average - the values themselves have the same measurement unit as the values that take part in calculation (in this case seconds drift per year) and at a very simplistic level it tells that that we have good confidence that we will find future values in the range AVG - STDDEV to AVG + STDDEV ...


We've seen that "how well the measured values are grouped together near the average" is dependent on how the observations are set up--i.e., in segments of a longer interval--and thus is dependent on an arbitrary phenomenon. A far better experimental design than this, that would yield up a meaningful, non-arbitrary, standard deviation, would be one with more than one "subject" for each movement--like three SBQJ015s, for example. The mean and standard deviation of annualized figures would, in this case, be fully meaningful, and about all that could be said would be that a larger sample would provide more accurate parameter estimates of both annual drift and standard deviation, but that those obtained would at least be meaningful.

In a more practical sense, why should we care about a watch's variability of measurement over some arbitrarily-set time sub-intervals? Its mean over those sub-intervals--or what is the same thing, its total drift over the larger interval--is our central concern, isn't it? If, in actual continuous wearing, my watch gained 2 seconds over a 6-month interval, I couldn't care less if, during that time, it fluctuated some milliseconds from day to day. I'd write this fluctuation off to random factors that wash out in the long term. On the other hand, if this watch, in continuous wear over a 6-month period, gained 12 seconds, but was dead on a steadily-increasing linear function every hour of every day, I'd be very concerned. Now, Mechanikus would not be concerned by the latter case because the standard deviation would be low (maybe even 0), and all that was wrong was rate error, _which can be adjusted for,_ according to Mechanikus. The trouble is that, for almost all quartz watches, this adjustment is just not available, and, as a result, rate error is the central, non-remediable, flaw.

I can see that you seem enamoured of the standard deviation as an indicator of accuracy and won't try to persuade you of its irrelevance any more. Still, in my opinion, you'd do well to move it to the back burner and focus mostly on rate error. ;-)


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## Catalin

South Pender said:


> ...
> I can see that you seem enamoured of the standard deviation as an indicator of accuracy and won't try to persuade you of its irrelevance any more. Still, in my opinion, you'd do well to move it to the back burner and focus mostly on rate error. ;-)


I tend to disagree with the way you seem to understand the meaning of standard deviation (which I believe means rather different things in populations vs. the kind of measurements that we have in this experiment). However rest assured that the standard deviation is NOT my only or even topmost indicator - and in probably 2 or 4 weeks it will become very clear why.

That being said long-term AVERAGED rate error can also be equally misleading only by itself to the actual performance of a quartz - case in point = a totally ordinary quartz that is kept at a good temperature (and is very funny that we have one in the tests).

My primary goal on that entire experiment (other than to encourage people to actually measure real stuff themselves - which - if successful - would at some point also provide decent 'population' information) was not so much to place a precise/absolute/unique 'performance number' on each of those watches but instead more about determining how sensitive to temperature (as primitive as I can measure) those really are (and at some level how that can be correlated with the age of the circuits inside).


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## Catalin

Hans Moleman said:


> Your the man!
> Some cheap advice from the sidelines:
> Spend some time on getting your data in a graph.
> You'll quickly be snowed under in your data.
> A graph makes everything a lot easier to see.
> 
> Its a real pain to get going, but worth it.


Yes, as soon as I get to somewhere around 7-10 points we'll get to that too - eventually together with a web structure around it - and certainly one including the pictures of the actual watches - which reminds me - I will again edit the top post to place links to some not-so-fancy pictures of those initial eight ...


----------



## Catalin

*Another note on the test from 2010-01-31*

I forgot to mention - with the same occasion I also did movies with a number of other quartz watches, however:

- digital-display watches seem to change from one value to the next much slower in time than the hands - and as such the precision will be MUCH smaller;

- on models with 'small seconds' (calibers 6760, 9000) it is MUCH more difficult to see things (at least with the camera and light that I have);

- I might keep 2-3 of the watches from this new tests (among them a second 7223 and a kinetic, together with my first EcoDrive - now 7 years old) and eventually add them in 2 or 4 weeks - but more as 'controls' on how 'normal quartz' acts on temperature changes ...


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## South Pender

Catalin said:


> I tend to disagree with the way you seem to understand the meaning of standard deviation (which I believe means rather different things in populations vs. the kind of measurements that we have in this experiment).


Well, no. The standard deviation of a set of _n_ observations is precisely defined, whether those observations belong to a sample from a population or a population itself (where _n_ is assumed to be infinity), and index precisely the same statistical phenomenon in both cases. One thing I forgot to mention earlier is that your plan of setting a sort of confidence interval by taking AVG ± St. Dev. is inadvisable. For any confidence interval to mean _anything_, there must be two factors present that are absent from your data: (a) _independent_ observations as the basis on which the standard deviation was calculated, and (b) knowledge of the distribution of the statistic (the standard deviation in this case). First, your repeated observations, arising from an arbitrary segmenting of the larger interval (and even if it weren't arbitrary) are clearly not independent (in fact, they're highly dependent), arising as they do from the _same watch_. Second, the distribution of such "standard deviation" values is completely unknown, but certainly would not be normal, an assumption (or at least that of symmetry) necessary for symmetric confidence intervals of the kind you suggest. Thus, you would be well-advised to use these "standard deviation" values as pure _descriptive_ statistics and to stay far, far away from any attempt at _inferential_ statistics such as the construction of confidence intervals. By taking AVG ± St. Dev, you would certainly be constructing an interval, but such an interval would have _*absolutely* no probabilistic interpretability, _by which I mean the ability to state a probability that the interval captures the parameter (which in the present case is the true, parameter annual drift for a _single_ watch). This, of course, is not how we usually use single-observation data (as a parameter); we instead use them as single data points that would permit the estimation of a parameter which, in the present case, would be the annual drift of all watches using the same movement. 



Catalin said:


> That being said long-term AVERAGED rate error can also be equally misleading only by itself to the actual performance of a quartz - case in point = a totally ordinary quartz that is kept at a good temperature (and is very funny that we have one in the tests).


This would be misleading only if we extrapolated these very good results to the entire range of reasonable temperatures. It is not misleading, however, in that it does tell us how this watch performs at that particular temperature.

As for temperature comparisons, you might benefit from trying to quantify the temperatures a little more precisely, and, at the very least, set them as closely as possible to "wearing" temperature and "storing" temperature. It seems to me that this is where the "extreme" precision is needed, not in the determination of the interval drifts, which can be estimated sufficiently-precisely by eye.


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## RPF

Trillions of dollars are moved daily by well paid professionals who calculate their risk exposure on the same shaky assumptions of normality. And they have been proven wrong more than once. Interestingly, the finance industry is one of the largest procurers of math/physics/engineering wizs and high-end simulation computers/software.

Catalin's approach, imho, though not mathematically rigorous, is sufficient for the purposes of this board, which is a hobbyist forum. At any rate, the data is already more sophisticated than most timing results we get anywhere else. 

I deal with multi-parameter estimation from huge data-sets and though it gets hairy very quickly, some of what we do is remarkably similar in concept to Catalin's due to the quality of the data. I do agree the terminology lacks precision but statistics isn't everyone's cuppa. I can easily follow his arguments though.

As for wearing and storage temperatures, that is geography and usage dependent. There are many places where climate control isn't standard.


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## South Pender

RPF said:


> I deal with multi-parameter estimation from huge data-sets and though it gets hairy very quickly, some of what we do is remarkably similar in concept to Catalin's due to the quality of the data. I do agree the terminology lacks precision but statistics isn't everyone's cuppa. I can easily follow his arguments though.


Do you actually calculate _within-subject_ standard deviations?



RPF said:


> As for wearing and storage temperatures, that is geography and usage dependent. There are many places where climate control isn't standard.


I wonder whether there really is that much variation--some certainly, but I'd be surprised if a great deal. Take wearing, for example. Most people have a skin-surface temperature around 91 deg.F. If they are spending most of their time inside, the ambient temp. for the watch may be around 84-88 deg.F. So, in my opinion, it would be useful to set one of the two temperature points to an average, or about 86 deg.F. As for storing, watches are normally stored inside, and again, we could hypothesize a range of, perhaps, 66-72 deg.F. So why not use the average here--69 deg.F--for the second temperature point. Results based on these two carefully-controlled temperature points should be a reasonable approximation for both conditions. My point was that we need to know exactly what the temperature points are in Catalin's experiment, and, at present, they seem a little vague.

Please don't misunderstand. My misgivings about the use of the standard deviation is specific to that issue alone and is an extension of comments on Mechanikus's approach. I fully agree (and have stated this earlier) that I think we can learn some useful things from Catalin's experiment.


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## RPF

Re: SD. Yes, to get a feel for things. It's difficult to make sense of many thousands of numbers fed out of a ticker-tape-like output. It's also difficult to make sense of insufficient data, esp. non-orthogonal ones. 

Re: temperatures. Skin temperature is one thing. It's remarkably consistent indoors yes. But outdoors is a different story, if said watch is exposed. There is sun, sweat, and other factors to contend with. 

66-72 F is too narrow a range for storage too. My storage temperature at home here in the tropics (outside my climate controlled storage cabinet) never drops below 80F, except for one or two days of the year. Kept in an unheated garage in the mid-west where I lived, the storage temperature would have fluctuated from 0-90+ F year-round. That's a 90F T-band vs. the 6 F proposed. The ambient temperature in some Indian cities is 130+ F in the heat of summer. And air-conditioning is not standard.

Even with climate control, the indoor storage range is unrealistic. I've been to homes where the thermostat has been set anywhere from 50-75 F, depending on the time of the year.


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## Catalin

South Pender said:


> Well, no. The standard deviation of a set of _n_ observations is precisely defined, whether those observations belong to a sample from a population or a population itself (where _n_ is assumed to be infinity), and index precisely the same statistical phenomenon in both cases.
> ...


Of course the standard deviation is precisely defined - it is a FIXED formula - my precise point is that the MEANING of the result is different when you deal with a statistical sampling inside a population compared to when you do an engineering experiment.

One major difference is that your entire 'thought exercise' from 2 posts above on 'what would it mean if I did other measurements' is not so relevant in this engineering context - that WAS 'objective data' and (once we account for measurement error) it is the data that we have to deal - it's not like we can arrange data that we don't like so much how it fits! (but with the caveat that if if the initial methodology is proven inaccurate it could be possible to discard measurements done under such inaccurate conditions - see my note that I might have to drop the first 3 intervals since those were of slightly variable length).

Other thing that is worth noting is that a quartz watch should be a rather easy to describe model (based 99.99% on the temperature and the watch-specific response to temperature - which is the actual 'unknown' in this micro experiment), and that the results should not be totally 'random-distributed' (as long as the temperatures are not).


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## Catalin

South Pender said:


> ...
> I wonder whether there really is that much variation--some certainly, but I'd be surprised if a great deal. Take wearing, for example. Most people have a skin-surface temperature around 91 deg.F. If they are spending most of their time inside, the ambient temp. for the watch may be around 84-88 deg.F. So, in my opinion, it would be useful to set one of the two temperature points to an average, or about 86 deg.F. As for storing, watches are normally stored inside, and again, we could hypothesize a range of, perhaps, 66-72 deg.F. So why not use the average here--69 deg.F--for the second temperature point. Results based on these two carefully-controlled temperature points should be a reasonable approximation for both conditions. My point was that we need to know exactly what the temperature points are in Catalin's experiment, and, at present, they seem a little vague.
> 
> Please don't misunderstand. My misgivings about the use of the standard deviation is specific to that issue alone and is an extension of comments on Mechanikus's approach. I fully agree (and have stated this earlier) that I think we can learn some useful things from Catalin's experiment.


Well, I agree that a better experiment would be to have 10 to 100 times more watches distributed equally among us and that all of us would have a thermostat device and rubidium standards and so on ... but unfortunately we don't :-(

My temperatures were not so much 'chosen' or 'set' - those are the real-life conditions where I keep my watches - there will probably be differences from winter to summer and in between - the point is that those are my objective conditions - other people will most likely have different conditions - AND THAT IS THE REASON WHY I ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO DO THEIR OWN TESTS !!!
(they can also benefit a little from the experience that I have gained - for instance the fact that a week-multiple interval might be an interval that will be easier to follow).

The experiments also are far from perfect 'laboratory-like' and instead more 'real-world-like' - even from time to time with small surprises - like a window that was left open too long while outside was freezing ;-)


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## South Pender

Catalin said:


> Of course the standard deviation is precisely defined - it is a FIXED formula - my precise point is that the MEANING of the result is different when you deal with a statistical sampling inside a population compared to when you do an engineering experiment.


No again. The standard deviation quantifies the square root of the mean squared deviations about the mean--nothing more, nothing less. Whether the data points arise from independent observations on a random variable measuring behavioral, financial, or engineering data is completely irrelevant to precisely what the standard deviation is indexing. Thus, an "engineering experiment" is in no way different with respect to the statistical phenomenon that is captured by the variance and its square root (the S.D.)

What _is_ different about your experiment is that you are defining (although you don't do this explicitly) the population as the single watch. The parameters both your mean and st. dev. are estimating are with reference to this (rather odd) population. In other words, the parameter mean is the average displacement for _this watch_, and the parameter st. dev. is that which applies to _this watch_. That is what I meant earlier when I said that we don't usually use a single entity (in this case a watch--say SBQJ015) as a population, but rather as a single data point understood as coming from a larger--and more meaningful--population (say that of _all_ SBQJ015s). That's also why I asked RPF whether he was in the habit of calculating within-subject standard deviations (something I very much doubt). Perhaps you are saying that within-subject analyses like this define "an engineering experiment," but they don't, believe me. Observations on a watch or small sample of watches behave much like any behavioral data, showing the between-subject variation that makes the calculation of the mean and st. dev. important. That way, we can extrapolate to more meaningful entities (like all SBQJ015s, rather than one SBQJ015).

So, I just wanted to clear that up. Your focus is on understanding how a single example of each movement behaves. That's fine--and interesting. My only real point was that, in my opinion, at least, the st. dev. in this context doesn't really give us terribly useful information--although reasonable people can disagree on this. Where st. dev. would be important would be in an experiment involving a sample of watches having the same movement.


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## South Pender

Catalin said:


> Well, I agree that a better experiment would be to have 10 to 100 times more watches distributed equally among us and that all of us would have a thermostat device and rubidium standards and so on ... but unfortunately we don't.


You don't need 100 watches (or even 10) to have a viable sample from which to make inferences to the corresponding populations (like all SBQJ015s). Three or four are sufficient using small-sample inferential techniques. Nor, in my opinion, does the measurement of time displacement have to be as precise as your technique provides. If, for example, three or four owners of, say, SBQJ015s were willing to carefully time their watches for a month under two different temperature conditions--say (a) 66-72 (stored) and (b) 84-88 (worn)--then knowledge could be gained about how the SBQJ015 movement _in general_ performs. This "engineering experiment" would have a different focus than does yours, but that is not to say that yours doesn't also provide very useful information.


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## Catalin

South Pender said:


> ...
> So, I just wanted to clear that up. Your focus is on understanding how a single example of each movement behaves. That's fine--and interesting. My only real point was that, in my opinion, at least, the st. dev. in this context doesn't really give us terribly useful information--although reasonable people can disagree on this. Where st. dev. would be important would be in an experiment involving a sample of watches having the same movement.


Actually it does - please note that even the Wikipedia article on the matter - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation#Interpretation_and_application - has a note on how that is interpreted in a different way in a single experiment with many measurements ( vs. with a 'population').

Also (and I would say rather interesting for this forum) it can tell us (when paired with the methodology dedicated to this specific goal) a little about how effective the actual TC is in a watch ...


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## South Pender

Catalin said:


> Actually it does - please note that even the Wikipedia article on the matter - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation#Interpretation_and_application - has a note on how that is interpreted in a different way in a single experiment with many measurements ( vs. with a 'population').
> 
> Also (and I would say rather interesting for this forum) it can tell us (when paired with the methodology dedicated to this specific goal) a little about how effective the actual TC is in a watch ...


Well, Catalin, I really don't want to belabor the point, but you need to understand that what is referred to as "measurement" is simply an independent observation on a random variable, which usually means different entities, not simply multiple measurements on a single entity. It's not that you don't have a population here; you do have a population in your experiment, but it is that of all the possible measurements on a single watch. Probably the most obvious criticism of such within-subject measurements (that is, measurements made within the same watch) lies in the arbitrariness of the choice of measurement points. You generated three such points and obtained a standard deviation of .5684. Had you chosen, instead, four measurement points, your st. dev. would have been close to 1.13, and with two measurement points, 1.29 (as noted above). So...what _is_ the standard deviation of your annualized drift figures? Why would that based on three measurement points be preferable to one based on two, or four, or 30? The trouble is, they'll all be different. The mean annualized drift, on the other hand, will not vary this way and is a meaningful descriptive statistic for your experiment.


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## Catalin

South Pender said:


> Well, Catalin, I really don't want to belabor the point, but you need to understand that what is referred to as "measurement" is simply an independent observation on a random variable, which usually means different entities, not simply multiple measurements on a single entity. It's not that you don't have a population here; you do have a population in your experiment, but it is that of all the possible measurements on a single watch. Probably the most obvious criticism of such within-subject measurements (that is, measurements made within the same watch) lies in the arbitrariness of the choice of measurement points. You generated three such points and obtained a standard deviation of .5684. Had you chosen, instead, four measurement points, your st. dev. would have been close to 1.13, and with two measurement points, 1.29 (as noted above). So...what _is_ the standard deviation of your annualized drift figures? Why would that based on three measurement points be preferable to one based on two, or four, or 30? The trouble is, they'll all be different. The mean annualized drift, on the other hand, will not vary this way and is a meaningful descriptive statistic for your experiment.


1. There is no 'random' variable.

2. As you can see many times (and long before your posts) I have INSISTED on the fact that the values are dependent on methodology and as such are not directly comparable with values in other methodology. However values with same methodology (like the 8 in my group) can be very well directly compared.

*Also measurements in multiples of weeks should be reasonably easy to normalize and compare directly - so I strongly encourage people to use 1 week or 2 weeks for their own intervals.
*
3. I do not know how you made your interpolation so that the STD-DEV with two intervals was 1.29 - the simplest linear interpolation that keeps track of the number of days and redistributes the days from the middle interval to the first and the last (still probably not optimal) gives me the values that you can see at http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20100131_2_intervals.pdf - with a STD-DEV of 0.4990 instead of 0.5684 - a smaller STD-DEV which actually makes a LOT more sense since generally with more measurements the instrumental errors start to accumulate and the STD-DEV will get bigger.


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## South Pender

Catalin said:


> 1. There is no 'random' variable.


The term _random variable_ is a statistical term that means any variable which can take on different (assumed independent) values. Thus, your repeated measurements of interval drift are--in statistical parlance--"observations on a random variable."



Catalin said:


> 3. I do not know how you made your interpolation so that the STD-DEV with two intervals was 1.29 - the simplest linear interpolation that keeps track of the number of days and redistributes the days from the middle interval to the first and the last (still probably not optimal) gives me the values that you can see at http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20100131_2_intervals.pdf - with a STD-DEV of 0.4990 instead of 0.5684 - a smaller STD-DEV which actually makes a LOT more sense since generally with more measurements the instrumental errors start to accumulate and the STD-DEV will get bigger.


Well, I won't get into my linear interpolation process, but suffice it to say that it was all I had to go on without your more finely-grained intermediate observations. Still, the fact remains that the number of, and size of, the intervals constructed has a direct effect on the resulting standard deviation (although not the mean). This, in effect, makes any reported standard deviation arbitrary. If I use daily intervals, my standard deviation estimate will be very different from what I'd get if I used 7-day or 14-day (which you seem to be suggesting, although I don't know why), or the roughly 10-day intervals you used. This fact further reduces the generalizability of your findings. I guess you're saying that all you want to know is the particular standard deviation that obtains with a single particular watch when measurements are taken at particular (say 7-day) measurement intervals. To me, this is overly specific and doesn't really tell us what others might expect. At least with the means you're not restricted to the last (interval-period) specificity.


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## Catalin

South Pender said:


> ...
> Well, I won't get into my linear interpolation process, but suffice it to say that it was all I had to go on without your more finely-grained intermediate observations. Still, the fact remains that the number of, and size of, the intervals constructed has a direct effect on the resulting standard deviation (although not the mean). This, in effect, makes any reported standard deviation arbitrary. If I use daily intervals, my standard deviation estimate will be very different from what I'd get if I used 7-day or 14-day (which you seem to be suggesting, although I don't know why), or the roughly 10-day intervals you used. This fact further reduces the generalizability of your findings. I guess you're saying that all you want to know is the particular standard deviation that obtains with a single particular watch when measurements are taken at particular (say 7-day) measurement intervals. To me, this is overly specific and doesn't really tell us what others might expect. At least with the means you're not restricted to the last (interval-period) specificity.


1. Standard Deviation is no magic bullet, but it has some value for people that can really understand what it means and which are the limits. (among other things it was helpful for me in confirming that the measurement errors in my methodology are decent).

2. The Standard Deviation can actually be 'normalized' for intervals that are not perfectly equal - here are the adjusted numbers:

http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20100131_adjusted.pdf

First STD-DEV is the value calculated with the Excel formula (which uses the wrong average and is not adjusting for intervals), then there is a value calculated with the correct average but non-adjusted intervals (see the red cell which should be zero), and then finally the value calculated with adjusted intervals (where in the green cell we finally have zero).

After the next interval I will probably switch to only using the adjusted STD-DEV values, and eventually organize data so as to see other things ...


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## webvan

webvan said:


> Gave it a try tonight with my 4 HEQs, I'm impressed!
> 1. Sync with AboutTime - get 2ms accuracy
> 2. Bring EarthSunx to the front with Shift+click then click on on picture
> 3. Shoot 10 seconds with Panansonic TZ7
> 4. Review frame by frame
> 
> Much more accurate than my previous "eye" timing but I don't want to reset my watches so I'll check the difference going forward.
> 
> Will revisit next week, no need to wait for a month now! Thanks again for sharing :-!


So about a week later, I ran through the same process for my 4 HEQs and got :

Watch : 1 week video spy / 3+ month manual spy
Lacroix : -2.04 / 2
Aerospace : - 7.37 / -11
E510 : 7.04 / 8
TQuartz : 13.51 / 16

Not sure what happened with the Aerospace, maybe a bad reading last week while I was getting th hang of it, will check next time.

Overall this method is very impressive and it could potentially save a lot of time. Will be adding a VHP that is on its way to me.


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## Catalin

webvan said:


> So about a week later, I ran through the same process for my 4 HEQs and got :
> 
> Watch : 1 week video spy / 3+ month manual spy
> Lacroix : -2.04 / 2
> Aerospace : - 7.37 / -11
> E510 : 7.04 / 8
> TQuartz : 13.51 / 16
> 
> Not sure what happened with the Aerospace, maybe a bad reading last week while I was getting th hang of it, will check next time.
> 
> Overall this method is very impressive and it could potentially save a lot of time. Will be adding a VHP that is on its way to me.


Very impressive! Also your E510 seems nicer than any of mine ...

The Aerospace I guess you have to read on the LCD screen - how fast is the transition on that one ? I did myself a test with an older Citizen and the time it takes to switch the LCD is long (and I placed a note on that in the thread), but now I realize that in 20-30 years the LCD technology might have evolved a little ;-)

Once again - at some point with 1-week tests you have to be rather precise with the hour at which you do the reading - a 2 hour difference is already bigger than 1% ...

Also I believe the method is good enough to quickly show differences with 'wear pattern' - so with the Aerospace it might have been just that ...


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## webvan

Yes, the LCD (might look at the minute hand that moves at 30/60" but not sure how "fast") or my reading, will see what happens next week.

Actually let me restate my numbers, I had already skipped to 02/09 and good point about the hour shift, after for correcting that, looks even better : 

Watch : 1 week video spy / 3+ month manual spy
Lacroix : -2.49 / 2
Aerospace : - 8.99 / -11
E510 : 8.59 / 8
TQuartz : 16.47 / 16


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## Catalin

*Intermediate results on 2010-02-14*

The latest numbers can be seen at:
http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20100214.pdf

Condensed version:

- 8F56 (SBQJ015) seems to be around -8 s/year when 'warm' (wearing it, or on my warm router), and around +8 s/y when 'at room temperature' (I would say around 16 s/y on a temperature difference around 8 degrees Celsius - which is NOT that bad !); surprisingly this is the ONLY place where my previous eye-only estimate from 2009 was not too optimistic (I was thinking around -6 and +12);

- my first E510 is currently suggesting a very disappointing +23 s/y but without a huge difference from warm to cold, certainly smaller than 6 s/y; my estimate was waaay too optimistic on this one, but my feeling is that something very weird is taking place - the total error since the start of march 2009 on the watch (when it was last set) is in the range of 16 seconds - so we are very close to one year at maybe 16-17 seconds ACTUAL error; however that error started VERY small in the first 6 months and then grew and is still growing - we might actually see 'live measurements' on how the T-C components go bad :-(

- the new E510/E410 pair (for which I actually started all those new 'accelerated tests') seem to be slightly better - the second E510 seems to be around +12 s/y at room temperature and around +15 s/y worn; the E410 is even closer to zero - somewhere in the range of -6 s/y room temp. and +1 s/y when warm; hopefully those two will be far more stable in time than my first E510 ;-)

- the 9923 twinquartz is not showing a huge difference now that it was kept warm but the total drift is huge - it will remain on the warm spot for another 2 weeks and after that I will try to adjust it to a decent error and then see how things are ...

- 5E31 is also not very impressive, but the last 3 intervals are not looking THAT bad, I might be very tempted to try adjusting this one even before checking how the error is when warm (which was normally planned for March);

- the 8F33 has a rather non-impressive +75 s/y error, but the results are VERY, VERY consistent (the standard deviation champion, but without having yet temperature variations) - in March we will see how the errors are when warm!

- the 7223 ('bellmaquartz') continues to be very impressive with under 12 s/y (and a decent standard deviation) - for an ordinary quartz that is a very good result, but of course the huge question is how the numbers will look in March on the warm segment ;-)


----------



## webvan

*Re: Intermediate results on 2010-02-14*

Thanks for the update, that TQ of yours is not in a good shape, mine was bad too originally (+4.5/month I think) but I sent it back to Takawatch and he took it down to about 1s/m not too bad for a 30 year old watch.

My update will have to wait until tomorrow, hopefully!


----------



## webvan

webvan said:


> Yes, the LCD (might look at the minute hand that moves at 30/60" but not sure how "fast") or my reading, will see what happens next week.
> 
> Actually let me restate my numbers, I had already skipped to 02/09 and good point about the hour shift, after for correcting that, looks even better :
> 
> Watch : 1 week video spy / 3+ month manual spy
> Lacroix : -2.49 / 2
> Aerospace : - 8.99 / -11
> E510 : 8.59 / 8
> TQuartz : 16.47 / 16


Results of the past week at room temperature : 
Watch : 1 week video spy / 3+ month manual spy
Lacroix : -0.8 / - 1.6
Aerospace : - 9.3 / -11.0
E510 : 12.7 / 8.0
TQuartz : 19.6 / 13.6*

Some variation, hope that trend doesn't continue in the E510! I just added the Longines Flagship VHP from 2007 that came in today. I set it using my GPS watch and then checked it against the video test, -0.13 behind, not too bad!

Will update my results in early March and will then do some "router temperature" testing ;-)

By the way I wipped out the ol' HDV camera with its super slow motion mode but it's a lengthy process (need to transfer to PC) and the quality isn't good enough to read the time on the screen, so I'll stick with my Panny TZ7. Only problem is that there is sometimes some blur in readings. Could be due to the LCD screen on my IBM X31 (yes it's old but it can't be beat!) so I'll try the 19" super fast LCD screen of my desktop computer next time.

* error in previous calculation


----------



## Eeeb

*Re: Intermediate results on 2010-02-14*

Yummy! THANKS!


----------



## webvan

webvan said:


> I just added the Longines Flagship VHP from 2007 that came in today. I set it using my GPS watch and then checked it against the video test, -0.13 behind, not too bad!


Not too bad but I wonder if it wasn't in fact +0.13 at least I'm somehow hoping it was since I did a quick check tonight and I'm positively at +0.20 so that would translate to +10spy if not it would be +46spy, not good...unfortunately I erased the previous video, will check again in a couple of days.


----------



## Catalin

webvan said:


> Not too bad but I wonder if it wasn't in fact +0.13 at least I'm somehow hoping it was since I did a quick check tonight and I'm positively at +0.20 so that would translate to +10spy if not it would be +46spy, not good...unfortunately I erased the previous video, will check again in a couple of days.


Something similar happened to me in my before-video tests, but now I just store the AVI files (for a year or so) on a HDD so that there is always a way to double-check ;-) Methodology is also very important - for instance not forgetting to sync the computer time to atomic time JUST before the tests.

About the LCD screens - obviously the higher the refresh-rate the better (the program starts with a default of 60 Hz and asks the operating system for the refresh rate and if it gets a confirmed one it sets something as close to that on the faster side), but the camera and the light also matters a lot - since the auto-exposure on the camera will alter the effective time for each frame. I believe that ideally for high refresh rates the LCD should be set to high/maximum brightness - but that also MUST be matched with the light on the watch itself. Even like that there will be (sometimes often) video frames that catch segments from two separate LCD frames and without using a very rigorous statistical approach you can not always go beyond the 33.3 milliseconds from a lower-end 30 FPS movie or the 16.6 ms from a 60 Hz LCD.

That last remark might also explain a little why apparently I gave _South Pender_ such a hard time - for about one week I have investigated the kind of errors that you get with the video method in order to be reasonably certain that the error are distributed in a way which allows the use of statistical improvements of accuracy - in other words I was still questioning the precision of a VERY repeatable technology based on quartz and silicon - so you can understand a little why I would be tempted to question (and calibrate) a LOT more something based on the combination of human vision and human perception of (very short) time - none of them very reliable :-d


----------



## webvan

Yes and I should probably add an AboutTime sync after each test to make sure my laptop's clock didn't "jump" for some reason.


----------



## webvan

huh...I was going a quick video test tonight and I just noticed that my Flagship VHP lost...10 SECONDS since last night, what gives ?! I think I read that in another thread about a Flagship VHP, strange disease...

I'm going to reset and see what happens but it's not looking good...


----------



## Catalin

webvan said:


> Yes and I should probably add an AboutTime sync after each test to make sure my laptop's clock didn't "jump" for some reason.


Laptops are VERY bad in this regard - if I sync to the atomic watch, than 10 minutes later I place the laptop to hibernation and another 20 minutes later I get back and sync again I often see errors in the range of 250 milliseconds, which is HUGE for a single hour, I have one automatic that is under that 6 seconds/day :-d - so the problem in that very specific scenario might not be so much the quartz accuracy process but instead the 'lags' and 'delays' when going in and out of hibernation (and then the time is software in the operating system gets saved to the 'realtime clock' and then restored back).

Anyway if I keep the computer running and I sync at 1 hour interval I never see errors over 5-10ms (which anyway seem to be the random part of the lag of my internet connection).


----------



## Catalin

webvan said:


> huh...I was going a quick video test tonight and I just noticed that my Flagship VHP lost...10 SECONDS since last night, what gives ?! I think I read that in another thread about a Flagship VHP, strange disease...
> 
> I'm going to reset and see what happens but it's not looking good...


I wonder if it is not something mechanical, in which some almost invisible dust is somewhere in the jewel cap of the stepper rotor and as such when coupled with a certain position of the hands and of the watch (and eventually with slightly discharged battery) it just makes the 'pushing' of the hands very difficult and as a result the watch just misses some seconds - since I believe nobody ever reported a VHP just 'going ahead' a few seconds, it always loses some ... this is not the only possible explanation but it is the first that comes to mind ... and I wonder if it might also be 'testable' with a setup which records the stepper pulses on the long term ... which of course raises the question if the problem is visible when you do not wear the watch ...

This might also be a small advantage for the Citizen 'fly by wire' mechanism - when a mechanical error takes place the electronic time inside is not disturbed and you can see it as a 'wrong alignment' problem ...


----------



## ppaulusz

Catalin said:


> ...I believe nobody ever reported a VHP just 'going ahead' a few seconds, it always loses some...


You are not serious, are you?


----------



## vizi

Catalin said:


> I wonder if it is not something mechanical, in which some almost invisible dust is somewhere in the jewel cap of the stepper rotor and as such when coupled with a certain position of the hands and of the watch (and eventually with slightly discharged battery) it just makes the 'pushing' of the hands very difficult and as a result the watch just misses some seconds - since I believe nobody ever reported a VHP just 'going ahead' a few seconds, it always loses some ... this is not the only possible explanation but it is the first that comes to mind ... and I wonder if it might also be 'testable' with a setup which records the stepper pulses on the long term ... which of course raises the question if the problem is visible when you do not wear the watch ...
> 
> This might also be a small advantage for the Citizen 'fly by wire' mechanism - when a mechanical error takes place the electronic time inside is not disturbed and you can see it as a 'wrong alignment' problem ...


serious thought?


----------



## Catalin

vizi said:


> serious thought?


Care to elaborate ? Is there any relevant question or information in your post ?


----------



## Catalin

*Update on 2010-02-28*

Just before the annual and perpetual calendars are doing 'their thing' ;-)

Latest results at:
http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20100228.pdf

Quick comments:

- the 8F56 had a surprising 'jump' but since it will have two other 2-week intervals in the same temperature range we will see ...

- the titanium E510 is 'confirmed out of specifications' at the end of 12 continuous months - total error 17 seconds, suggested annual error from last two months - around 24s/y, which is big; however I have accepted a very generous offer from the seller (Ujiie shop) and that one will go for service 'home in Japan' (too bad that a trip for myself would have been MUCH more expensive) :-d ; I will keep you posted on how things go;

- the E510/E410 pair continues in a rather consistent way, with the E510 also showing very little change from temperature and the E410 slightly more but VERY well adjusted around zero; those two and the 9923 will no longer stay on the warm spot (at least for the next two intervals);

- the 9923 twin quartz will go for a quick adjustment hopefully during this week - in theory I am aiming for something under +24s/year when not worn, and ideally slightly negative when worn, but the age on this one might make things tricky;

- the 5E31 shows good consistency on the last 4 intervals and is now going for two intervals on the warm spot;

- the 8F33 continues to be the most consistent one, but now is also going to the 'real test' on the warm spot;

- the totally non-TC 7223 is still VERY good at under 12s/year average, and it took the 3rd and last spot on the wifi router for the next two intervals.


----------



## webvan

*Re: Update on 2010-02-28*

thanks for the update, who are you using to adjust the TQ ?


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Update on 2010-02-28*



webvan said:


> thanks for the update, who are you using to adjust the TQ ?


I will try first a local watchmaker which has a decent timer device and where I can also observe things in person, higher on my list could be the other watchmaker (not same town but at least same country) that did the mod on my Exceed 6760 and the full service on the 7223 (which he got around 12s/y) - both the 7223 and the 9923 have standard analog adjustments and is 99% about having a decent timer device, good understanding of the things involved and a steady hand ;-)

The adjusted 9923 might go for a few 1-week accelerated tests (with the option of a second adjustment if badly needed) and will get back in the main test after the DST change which I believe will be on March 28th in EU ...

The other thing that is tempting is to leave the normal trimmer untouched and try to see what can be changed by adjusting the SECOND trimmer in the 9923 ... I might need to do that anyway if I get the average rate around zero but the difference from warm to cold remains very high ... see pictures of the caliber (different case) at:

http://akiyose.com/watch-repair/kingquartz9923-8050.html


----------



## webvan

*Re: Update on 2010-02-28*

Interesting link, do they explain how to adjust it ? Not sure who you bought it from, but I got mine from Takawatch and got him to adjust it from 65 spy to 15spy.


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Update on 2010-02-28*



webvan said:


> Interesting link, do they explain how to adjust it ? Not sure who you bought it from, but I got mine from Takawatch and got him to adjust it from 65 spy to 15spy.


I have a PDF manual of 9923 (actually of some sort of low-quality fax of it ;-) ) but it only says to always adjust the rate from the main trimmer, which gave me the idea that the second one might adjust the TC slope somehow ...

Mine was rather very low-cost from a JP auction - but is funny since the crystal is probably not sapphire but DOES have anti-reflective coating on the inside b-)


----------



## webvan

*Re: Update on 2010-02-28*

An update over the past three weeks : 
------------------------------
Watch : Previous week / last 3 weeks in spy
-------------------------------
Lacroix : -0.8 / - 1.4
Aerospace : - 9.3 / -6.2 (wore it quite a bit, that might explain the diff)
E510 : 12.7 / 12.2
TQuartz : 19.6 / 17.4
Pulsar 8F56 : 35 / 28 (over last week)

After completing this test the five watches were put on top of my router where the temperature is about 30c/85f will check them again next week. Not really expecting any big change except for the 8F56, we shall see...


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Update on 2010-02-28*



webvan said:


> An update over the past three weeks :
> ------------------------------
> Watch : Previous week / last 3 weeks in spy
> -------------------------------
> Lacroix : -0.8 / - 1.4
> Aerospace : - 9.3 / -6.2 (wore it quite a bit, that might explain the diff)
> E510 : 12.7 / 12.2
> TQuartz : 19.6 / 17.4
> Pulsar 8F56 : 35 / 28 (over last week)
> 
> After completing this test the five watches were put on top of my router where the temperature is about 30c/85f will check them again next week. Not really expecting any big change except for the 8F56, we shall see...


Very interesting !!! If you don't plan on opening the Flagship VHP this week I believe that should also be interesting to test (depending on the actual storage space on the router).

Note on the router - mine is warmer than 30C (more like 35-40C at times) so I place the watch 'crown up' = smaller contact point with the warm source, more contact space with the colder air; however if the temperature in your case is 30C you can better place them 'face up' (or 'face down' if the bracelet does not allow full contact for the back).

Over a single week the differences might not be huge but could be in the range that we can measure with good confidence (I would say that with a very careful procedure the average error is somewhere under 1s/y on 2-weeks measurements, probably around 2s/y on just one week).


----------



## South Pender

*Re: Update on 2010-02-28*



Catalin said:


> Very interesting !!! If you don't plan on opening the Flagship VHP this week I believe that should also be interesting to test (depending on the actual storage space on the router).
> 
> Note on the router - mine is warmer than 30C (more like 35-40C at times) so I place the watch 'crown up' = smaller contact point with the warm source, more contact space with the colder air; however if the temperature in your case is 30C you can better place them 'face up' (or 'face down' if the bracelet does not allow full contact for the back).
> 
> Over a single week the differences might not be huge but could be in the range that we can measure with good confidence (I would say that with a very careful procedure the average error is somewhere under 1s/y on 2-weeks measurements, probably around 2s/y on just one week).


I'm obviously missing something here, but can you explain just why an average error value calculated with your highly-accurate video method on the basis of one week should prorate to an annualized value that is any different from what a similar 2-week reading would produce? We are, after all, measuring rate error here, aren't we?

Is the purpose of doing these extremely coarse temperature changes to ascertain whether there is _some_ effect of temperature change with the movements? Isn't that fully expected absent any experiment? Perhaps I'm missing something here too, but since the actual "warm" temperature is pretty vague (seemingly running from something on the order of 30C up to, perhaps, 40C), just what do you expect to determine from this experiment?


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Update on 2010-02-28*



South Pender said:


> I'm obviously missing something here, but can you explain just why an average error value calculated with your highly-accurate video method on the basis of one week should prorate to an annualized value that is any different from what a similar 2-week reading would produce? We are, after all, measuring rate error here, aren't we?
> 
> Is the purpose of doing these extremely coarse temperature changes to ascertain whether there is _some_ effect of temperature change with the movements? Isn't that fully expected absent any experiment? Perhaps I'm missing something here too, but since the actual "warm" temperature is pretty vague (seemingly running from something on the order of 30C up to, perhaps, 40C), just what do you expect to determine from this experiment?


That should be REALLY obvious (for anybody that designs a methodology and scientifically estimates the EXPECTED ERRORS).

The average error (which can be seriously improved with careful analysts of multiple movies) is most likely in the range of 15-25 ms (the monitor frame rate is 60Hz, around 17ms plus under 10ms for the internet atomic time sync), let's say 20ms. since that will make calculations easy.

If you take two measurements and the errors go in the WORST case scenario you will have an error on the measured time difference of around 40ms - and this error when you scale the measured rate to seconds/year *WILL ALSO BE SCALED*, and will go to 40ms * 52weeks = about 2 seconds when the interval is 1 week, 40ms * 26 intervals = about 1 second when the interval is 2 weeks.

However the fact that I got standard deviations in the range of 0.4s on the yearly rate (when keeping the temperature constant) suggests that the actual measurement error is never THAT bad as the (pessimistic) estimate above suggests.

Regarding the temperature changes - that is a slightly different thing where I have to cope with the limits of the devices that I have - while I DID measure the temperature of the router it does vary a little from one corner to another and also it is different depending on the internal CPU load. However my goal was not to have a device with a precise numerical temperature, but instead to get the watches on the device to have about the same temperature as when worn on my hand - for which purpose I found a specific position which fits very well that requirement. That being done my generic test is trying to measure the rates of my watches:
- all time at the temperature when not worn;
- all time at the temperature when worn.

While the values that I measure might not be anywhere as numerically precise as the results from *dwjquest*, they hold a much more practical information for myself - since those ARE the temperatures where my watches spend most of their lives ;-)

The other directly-comparable result from having measurements at two temperatures is that I can compare the differences on each watch - for instance E510 models have shown under 2-3s of difference (from worn to not worn), the E410 around 7s, my 8F56 around 16s and I expect in a week or so well over 40s (towards 80-120s) from a totally non-TC 32 kHz quartz.

My measurements and estimates suggest that the difference in the two AVERAGE temperatures should be in the range of 8 degrees Celsius and might very well correspond to the points around 70 and 85 Fahrenheit on the much more precise graphs that we got courtesy of *dwjquest* - however it seems my own 8F56 is better than his 8F35 or 8F56 (at least for the moment, and the fact that next week the total error on it over full 12 months is clearly less than 2 seconds suggests that the video measurements give a pretty damn good estimate), and also I must say that it might be possible that my non-TC 7223 could show a better difference from 70 to 85 Fahrenheit than his 8F32 - and I am dying of curiosity to see how much the difference is for my own 8F33 and 5E31.


----------



## South Pender

*Re: Update on 2010-02-28*



Catalin said:


> That should be REALLY obvious (for anybody that designs a methodology and scientifically estimates the EXPECTED ERRORS).
> 
> The average error (which can be seriously improved with careful analysts of multiple movies) is most likely in the range of 15-25 ms (the monitor frame rate is 60Hz, around 17ms plus under 10ms for the internet atomic time sync), let's say 20ms. since that will make calculations easy.
> 
> If you take two measurements and the errors go in the WORST case scenario you will have an error on the measured time difference of around 40ms - and this error when you scale the measured rate to seconds/year *WILL ALSO BE SCALED*, and will go to 40ms * 52weeks = about 2 seconds when the interval is 1 week, 40ms * 26 intervals = about 1 second when the interval is 2 weeks.


OK. So it is _measurement error_, not rate error, that you are concerned with here. I misunderstood. Since measurement error should be zero-centered, couldn't you eliminate most of that slop in your prorating by taking more measurements? I'm assuming, when I say that, that you would be no more likely to obtain positive than negative measurement error--no more likely to have a measurement error of +20 sec. than one of -20 sec. However, if your measurement error is not random, this washing-out of average error via multiple assessments will not occur.


----------



## South Pender

*Re: Update on 2010-02-28*



Catalin said:


> While the values that I measure might not be anywhere as numerically precise as the results from *dwjquest*, they hold a much more practical information for myself - since those ARE the temperatures where my watches spend most of their lives ;-)


OK. That makes sense. I agree that these are by far the two most relevant temperature points when assessing watch accuracy. I guess I've been content to simply wear the watch for a while and assess its accuracy and then leave if off for several months and repeat the measurement. I think that a disadvantage in using the "router method" is that it's hard to be sure that you are really simulating wearing temperature. First, the temperature that the watch comes into contact with (on your skin) is, evidently, around 91° F or about 33° C. If your router is varying from that to any degree, your results will not be a good reflection of wearing temperature. Second, wearing a watch against a skin temperature of 91° F is, I would think, different from a watch lying against a router that was producing the same temperature. In the case of the router, the ambient temperature will be pretty constant, whereas when wearing a watch, there are frequent changes in the ambient temperature, as, for example, when you go outside with a jacket on, then go inside with short or long sleeves and inside to locations with varying temperatures, etc. Wouldn't it work better to just wear the watch for an extended period and do your testing that way than trying to simulate this? I see this as different from dwjquest's tests where he is trying to determine precise rate changes over a precisely-controlled temperature range.


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Update on 2010-02-28*



South Pender said:


> OK. So it is _measurement error_, not rate error, that you are concerned with here. I misunderstood. Since measurement error should be zero-centered, couldn't you eliminate most of that slop in your prorating by taking more measurements? I'm assuming, when I say that, that you would be no more likely to obtain positive than negative measurement error--no more likely to have a measurement error of +20 sec. than one of -20 sec. However, if your measurement error is not random, this washing-out of average error via multiple assessments will not occur.


On this one you are right :-!

Being measurement errors (mostly based on the fact that for a given video frame of about 17ms we can not say when the seconds-hand has moved inside that interval) it is indeed most likely that the error can be reduced by doing a lot of measurements = analyzing a lot of frames from a few movies - which I normally do in the hope that I find a frame where the seconds-hand appears 'in move' - and now I can quickly find something like that almost all of the time (with my setup and about 3-4 movies of 10 seconds each).

Also I now try to sync to internet time until I get 2 syncs at under 5ms apart.

That being said there will still be measurement errors, but at that level I can live with them.


----------



## webvan

*Re: Update on 2010-02-28*



webvan said:


> An update over the past three weeks :
> ------------------------------
> Watch : Previous week / last 3 weeks in spy
> -------------------------------
> Lacroix : -0.8 / - 1.4
> Aerospace : - 9.3 / -6.2 (wore it quite a bit, that might explain the diff)
> E510 : 12.7 / 12.2
> TQuartz : 19.6 / 17.4
> Pulsar 8F56 : 35 / 28 (over last week)
> 
> After completing this test the five watches were put on top of my router where the temperature is about 30c/85f will check them again next week. Not really expecting any big change except for the 8F56, we shall see...


"Router temp" numbers are in and there are some interesting results:

------------------------------
Watch : Previous week(s) room temp (70F)/Router week (80F)
-------------------------------
Lacroix : -0.8 / 15.8
Aerospace : - 6.2 / 7.2
E510 : 12.2 / 10.7
TQuartz : 17.4 / 4.4
Pulsar 8F56 : 28 / 22

I double checked the numbers as the variations are quite surprising, +16.6 for the Lacroix and +13.4 for the Aerospace, both powered with an ETA Thermoline movement. The TQ sees a similar variation in absolute value at -13.4.

The E510 shows the lowest variation and the 8F56 didn't benefit as much as much as I thought from the "heat". I'm going to wear it as much as I can over the next week to see if there is more of an impact.

Overall unexpected results with the E510 appearing here to be the most "thermo-insensitive"

PS - I looked at the COSC certificate of my Lacroix that gives detailed information (unlike the Breitling certificate) and they have : 
23c : 3.65spy
38c : 21.6spy
8c : -18.25spy
So the variation I observed is consistent. Lookint at Djwquet's graphs I was expecting a bit better.


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Update on 2010-02-28*



webvan said:


> "Router temp" numbers are in and there are some interesting results:
> 
> ------------------------------
> Watch : Previous week(s) room temp (70F)/Router week (80F)
> -------------------------------
> Lacroix : -0.8 / 15.8
> Aerospace : - 6.2 / 7.2
> E510 : 12.2 / 10.7
> TQuartz : 17.4 / 4.4
> Pulsar 8F56 : 28 / 22
> 
> I double checked the numbers as the variations are quite surprising, +16.6 for the Lacroix and +13.4 for the Aerospace, both powered with an ETA Thermoline movement. The TQ sees a similar variation in absolute value at -13.4.
> 
> The E510 shows the lowest variation and the 8F56 didn't benefit as much as much as I thought from the "heat". I'm going to wear it as much as I can over the next week to see if there is more of an impact.
> 
> Overall unexpected results with the E510 appearing here to be the most "thermo-insensitive"
> 
> PS - I looked at the COSC certificate of my Lacroix that gives detailed information (unlike the Breitling certificate) and they have :
> 23c : 3.65spy
> 38c : 21.6spy
> 8c : -18.25spy
> So the variation I observed is consistent. Lookint at Djwquet's graphs I was expecting a bit better.


Very interesting real-world results - the E510 is looking very similar to my recent steel one and the old titanium before showing the problems in the recent months (for which it was sent back to JP for service, more on that when it gets back).

In some way the most surprising is indeed the 8F56 - which is showing a better/smaller than expected variation - even if the absolute value is a little on the fast side.

Oh, and IMHO the TwinQuartz is also looking AMAZING - given that we are speaking about a watch at 30+ years of age !!!


----------



## Catalin

*Update on 2010-03-14*

The latest numbers can be found at:

http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20100314.pdf

Condensed version:

- 8F56 seems to be in the same region as last interval; somewhere in March it will also celebrate 12 months since last set about one year ago, with a total error (can be seen in the Error column) over 12 months of something like +1 second;

- the titanium E510 is in JP for service, I will keep you posted on the results when it gets back;

- the steel E510/E410 pair is somehow consistent with the temperature in the new storage position (but the E510 was also worn quite a little, and also the last two weeks were rather sunny so the average temperature for those two - that are kept close to a window - was certainly on the higher part of the listed interval);

- on the 9923 twinquartz you can see the 'poor man HEQ adjustment' - a number of smaller intervals when I was 'swinging' the trimmer in search of a good position, which was not touched for the last week and it seems that indeed I might have found something good, the next two weeks might confirm that at 'room temperature' and if that is OK the 9923 might get back on the warm router to get a better idea on how the TC works inside it ...

- the 5E31 was on the warm router and the rate has changed, but it has changed just a little - in the range of -6 s/y - only the E510 models are better than that so the old 5E31 still has some 'TC magic' left in it! However since the adjustment is apparently by pattern-cutting and does not reach so high I don't know if I will try it ... at least not for the moment ...

- the 10-years old 8F33 (which was VERY consistent on a rather constant temperature) was also showing changes on the warm router of about -10 seconds - not as good as the 5E31 but still good, if there was a way to access the factory calibration it could also become a good HEQ - unfortunately again we have pattern-cutting for a total error that is too big :-(

- finally the 'ordinary quartz' 7223 is showing that is just not TC at all - after a rather constant +12s/y when at room temperature (or very little worn) it was moved to the warm router where it is showing -45s/y (for a -60s/y change over those apx. 8 Celsius or 15 Fahrenheit); still I expect the average over one entire year to be in the HEQ range since I do not wear that one a lot, so a lucky quartz curve plus a very good calibration could result in some very nice 'average 1-year rate' - we'll see in a few months ;-)

There have been some other watches in my recent tests but nothing spectacular - the smooth-moving Citizen F230 seems to be around +60s/y (but the measurement errors on that one are quite large) and the other rather decent-calibrated model in the tests was an old Seiko 6M25 also around the same +60s/y (but very consistent).


----------



## T. Wong

*Re: Update on 2010-03-14*

Fun to read! So the 8F56 is performing well, it seems. gaining only 1sec/year...was that assuming the stated +- 20secs/year as a base line for your watch?


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Update on 2010-03-14*



T. Wong said:


> Fun to read! So the 8F56 is performing well, it seems. gaining only 1sec/year...was that assuming the stated +- 20secs/year as a base line for your watch?


That was achieved with a little trick - obviously last year when I initially set it as close to the atomic internet time as I could, I did not know in advance how it will work, but after a few months I noted it was looking a little fast if I was not wearing it (and instead just keeping it at room temperature) and a little slow if I was wearing it all the time - so after the first few months I decided to leave it (when not wearing it) on my slightly-warm wifi router, which was keeping it very close to the same temperature as if I was wearing the watch all the time.

After starting the tests discussed in this thread I know a little more precise the actual rates for room-temperature and skin-temperature and the HUGE question remaining is how those will evolve in time (there is a very interesting thread at https://www.watchuseek.com/showthread.php?t=366862 which to me suggests that aging might play an important role ...)


----------



## webvan

*Re: Update on 2010-03-14*

Thanks for the update. Excellent job on the TQ regulation ! Can you list the steps you followed ?

Did you sent the E510 to Citizen for servicing? Was it still under warranty ?


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Update on 2010-03-14*



webvan said:


> Thanks for the update. Excellent job on the TQ regulation ! Can you list the steps you followed ?
> 
> Did you sent the E510 to Citizen for servicing? Was it still under warranty ?


Well, on the TwinQuartz it was pure luck - as you can see in the PDF there was a 2-day interval when I did nothing waiting for the local watchmaker to see if we can use his timer, then when that option failed I decided to go 'on my own' and I just rotated the main trimmer counterclockwise like 45 degrees and later that day took another video reading to get a correct start point, then 3 days later I got the first reading showing like -60 s/y (coming from +150), so I decided to go back about a quarter of the initial 45 degrees interval - the trimmer was tricky and I knew I did not hit the desired spot so two days later I did another reading and indeed I was still too far away on the minus side, so on Sunday I went a little more and then back to the initially planned point - apparently on this one my luck was much better and after one entire week the reading shows a very good value, but it remains to be seen how the trimmer will 'settle' during the current two weeks - I am anxiously awaiting the 28th when anyway most of my quartz watches will switch to DST and will have the seconds 'altered' - of course except for the 8F56 and E510/E410 pair ... it would be nice if the titanium E510 will also get back until then, but I don't have huge hopes ...

On the titanium E510 - that one was just getting at the end of its 12 months international warranty, while it was still inside that interval I did ask locally for the Citizen service but those guys said the E510 is a caliber that they do not handle so I asked the Ujiie shop from where it was bought (and from where in the meantime I also got the smooth-seconds caliber F230) and they have been most gracious and said their Citizen service should be able to look into it even if by the time when the watch arrived in JP the warranty was over - I am now waiting for their feedback on what the service guys could see with that watch which was now increasingly getting out of the original specification ...


----------



## webvan

*Re: Update on 2010-03-14*

Router week #2 - slightly warmer, maybe 83 on average, I wore the Pulsar each day and it spend nights on the router.

------------------------------
Watch : Previous week(s) room temp (70F)/Router week (80F)/Router week (83F)
-------------------------------
Lacroix : -0.8 / 15.8 / 13.4
Aerospace : - 6.2 / 7.2 / 15.9
E510 : 12.2 / 10.7 / 10.6
TQuartz : 17.4 / 4.4 / -1.0
Pulsar 8F56 : 28 / 22 / 14.0

Some odd varations, especially for the Aerospace, in light of this I will run another router test during the coming week. The Pulsar is now within specs when worn, nice watch too. Too bad I'll have to reset it to set the GMT time next week. No numbers on the VHP yet as I am fine-tuning it, or at least trying to!


----------



## webvan

*Re: Update on 2010-03-14*

Router week (RW) #3 - warmer again, probably around 85F on average, I wore the Pulsar each day and it spend nights on the router.

------------------------------
Watch : Previous week(s) room temp (70F)/RW (80F)/RW(83F)/RW(85F)
-------------------------------
Lacroix : -0.8 / 15.8 / 13.4 / 16.2
Aerospace : - 6.2 / 7.2 / 15.9 / 20.9
E510 : 12.2 / 10.7 / 10.6 / 10.5
Twin Quartz : 17.4 / 4.4 / -1.0 / 0.2
Pulsar 8F56 : 28 / 22 / 14.0 / 14.5
Longines VHP : - / - / - / 5.1

Added the Longines this week as I'm finally happy with its regulation. I'll see how it behaves this week at room temp, looking at the other ETA based HEQs, I'm guessing between -10/-5 spy.

Non HEQ and it's dipped a bit but the accuracy of my TAG Heuer F1 with the unique Calibre S is remaining very accurate : -26spy after 4 months at room temp. I'll put it on my router this week to see the impact. The others are going back in the box !


----------



## T. Wong

*Re: Update on 2010-03-14*

Catalin, this link to a Japanese watch clinic in Akita city in the north coast of Japan you might find interesting. http://www.minase-ks.co.jp/english/clinic/index.html

They service all watch makes. They list only regulation of mechanicals however. I wonder if they would regulate/could regulate an HEQ Seiko model like my Dolce 8N41? or even test it? hmmmm....maybe I could ask my Japanese wife to enquire! ha!


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Update on 2010-03-14*



T. Wong said:


> Catalin, this link to a Japanese watch clinic in Akita city in the north coast of Japan you might find interesting. http://www.minase-ks.co.jp/english/clinic/index.html
> 
> They service all watch makes. They list only regulation of mechanicals however. I wonder if they would regulate/could regulate an HEQ Seiko model like my Dolce 8N41? or even test it? hmmmm....maybe I could ask my Japanese wife to enquire! ha!


That would be interesting to know and I guess they most likely do it - the general quote of ￥18,000 for a full service for JDM HEQ models is however not that small ! (I guess it might cover sending back certain calibers to factory, but that is just a guess).

Another somehow similar JP shop might be this one:

http://akiyose.com/battery-exchange/japan-watch.html

However that being said on 8N41 my guess would be that certain calibration results could be achieved even with just 'home equipment' - since the 6 switches in that caliber look perfectly reversible the worst case scenario (avoiding major accidents on opening the case) is to not have the manual and just have to experiment and see what kind of change in timing each of those is doing - probably very time-consuming if the only precise timing method available is the 'video method' from this thread, but still perfectly possible :-d


----------



## T. Wong

*Re: Update on 2010-03-14*



Catalin said:


> That would be interesting to know and I guess they most likely do it - the general quote of ￥18,000 for a full service for JDM HEQ models is however not that small ! (I guess it might cover sending back certain calibers to factory, but that is just a guess).
> 
> Another somehow similar JP shop might be this one:
> 
> http://akiyose.com/battery-exchange/japan-watch.html
> 
> However that being said on 8N41 my guess would be that certain calibration results could be achieved even with just 'home equipment' - since the 6 switches in that caliber look perfectly reversible the worst case scenario (avoiding major accidents on opening the case) is to not have the manual and just have to experiment and see what kind of change in timing each of those is doing - probably very time-consuming if the only precise timing method available is the 'video method' from this thread, but still perfectly possible :-d


In your estimation would my 8N41 need a service/cleaning after all these years? (since 1995 or so when the owner had gotten it? The battery went dead and he desked it never to wear it again. He wore his Arnie for work!
I got a new battery installed and the watch sits by the computer. Time is never off the internet Japan time.....Just leave it alone?
BTW the quoted price is kinda normal for Japan hahaha! One gets used to it here! hehe!


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Update on 2010-03-14*



T. Wong said:


> In your estimation would my 8N41 need a service/cleaning after all these years? (since 1995 or so when the owner had gotten it? The battery went dead and he desked it never to wear it again. He wore his Arnie for work!
> I got a new battery installed and the watch sits by the computer. Time is never off the internet Japan time.....Just leave it alone?
> BTW the quoted price is kinda normal for Japan hahaha! One gets used to it here! hehe!


If the accuracy is good and you do not need serious water resistance I don't really see why you should service a good quartz watch before 20 years or so - maybe eventually at the next battery change or if you suspect that humidity might create problems ...


----------



## Catalin

*Registered EarthSunX ...*

The full registered (never expiring) version of EathSunX with the milliseconds display was just launched during this week - since I promised it for free to members of the forum (in exchange for posting their results in the forum somewhere) - you just need to let me know (by *private* message) your email (and a registration name) and it will be automatically be sent to you (by email) ...


----------



## T. Wong

*Re: Update on 2010-03-14*



Catalin said:


> If the accuracy is good and you do not need serious water resistance I don't really see why you should service a good quartz watch before 20 years or so - maybe eventually at the next battery change or if you suspect that humidity might create problems ...


okay, thanks, Catalin!:-!


----------



## Haqnut

Another interesting thread, thank you Catalin.


----------



## Catalin

*Update with data from 2010-03-28 and the DST switch ...*

Late on Sunday I managed to do my measurements - but it was a HUGE pain since on that day here in EU there was a DST switch to 'summer time', and as such in the first part of the day I had to only set my watches that were not part of the video timing tests and much later in the evening make a full set of measurements, then update the time and take a new set of measurements from the watches that have no easy DST adjustment as a starting base for the next interval ...

The resulting data can be seen at http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20100328.pdf (and already has to be interpreted with care since on some watches many things took place).

Some conclusions:

- the 8F56 (SBQJ015) generated expected values - I would say the average is around +11s/year at room temperature and -8s/y warm ; the watch was now moved back on the router (which is the normal storage place for it ;-) );

- the titanium E510 is still away, and the steel E510/E410 pair generated the same solid results (the E510 was a little more than usual, but it was worn A LOT, actually at least a few hours every day);

- my 9923 King Quartz twinquartz still looks like a VERY pleasant surprise - the error at constant room temperature looks like *under 1 second / year* !!! Of course it was pure luck after 'playing' with the trimmer (and might still shift a little over time), but the result is more than I ever hoped - and now the 9923 also goes on the warm router for a test on a slightly higher temperature - I am really curious how thermo-compensation works after 30+ years !!!

- the 5E31 confirmed the very good results from the previous interval and the average looks pretty much around +58 s/y room and +52 s/y warm, with just 6 s/y difference - I only have a better level of T-C in the E510 models !!!

- also the 8F33 did very consistent - around +75 s/y room and +65 s/y warm (which is actually a smaller difference than the much newer and higher-end 8F56, unfortunately too much to be totally corrected by pattern-cutting, but we'll see about that);

- the non-TC 7223 also did pretty much as expected in the 'warm position' - average around -40 s/y warm, +12 s/y room - since I do not wear it a lot I expect an annual average under 10s/y which is amazing for a non-TC watch :-!

- a few results were added for some of my other watches in tests - but on those I might not keep a very regular schedule (except maybe with 2 intervals on the warm router to see how big the *room vs. warm* difference is). On the next two-weeks interval on the warm router I have the 8F56, the 9923 twin quartz and also the smooth-seconds caliber F230 - which is *BY FAR* the most difficult and imprecise to measure !!! (the small ticks do not seem to be timed equally around the dial, so I am now trying to always measure with the seconds-hand around 50 seconds).

Another unusual thing in the data - this time in the numbers after 'resetting' the non-DST-friendly watches - most of my watches show a small delay, being 'late' around *300 milliseconds* on average (with maybe plus or minus *100 milliseconds*) - but with some exceptions (one pair where I set them a little in advance).

However the most notable exception to the above is the 9923 twinquartz, which was set in a pair with 5E31 (9923 right hand with -1.475 and 5E31 left hand with -0.506) and which from the moment I pressed the crown in has shown a *perfectly clear internal delay (visible to the eye after pressing the crown) of around 1 second before actually starting !!!* (that IMHO suggests that the crown-out on the twinquartz is indeed more than just a mechanical thing).


----------



## T. Wong

*Re: Update with data from 2010-03-28 and the DST switch ...*

thanks for the updated data. Since I too have an 8F56, I hope it performs per your new data results...! :


----------



## webvan

*Re: Update on 2010-05-03*

After three router weeks, back to Room Temp (RT) - around 72F on average (85F on the router)

------------------------------
Watch : RT1/RW1/RW2/RW3/RT2
-------------------------------
Lacroix : -0.8 / 15.8 / 13.4 / 16.2 / 2.0
Aerospace : - 6.2 / 7.2 / 15.9 / 18.9 / 6.9
E510 : 12.2 / 10.7 / 10.6 / 10.5 / 11.8
Twin Quartz : 17.4 / 4.4 / -1.0 / 0.2 / 18.2
Pulsar 8F56 : 28 / 22 / 14.0 / 14.5 / 36
Longines VHP : - / - / - / 5.1 / -2.3

No big surprise, back to the previous Room Temperature numbers with some rather large swings for the Lacroix (-14)/Aerospace (-12) both ETA based and the TQ (+18). The TQ is old so it's not a big surprise, but the Lacroix/Aerospace look like they could do better. The ETA based Longines has a much smaller swing at -7, which I'm not going to complain about. The champ is still the E510 with a negligeable variation (-2), too bad it can't be adjusted by the user.

Non HEQ TAG Heuer F1 with the unique Calibre S on the router this week and it went from -26spy at room temp to -40spy. Similar absolute variation than the other ETA watches, except for the Longines, but the other way round.


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Update on 2010-05-03*



webvan said:


> After three router weeks, back to Room Temp (RT) - around 72F on average (85F on the router)
> 
> ------------------------------
> Watch : RT1/RW1/RW2/RW3/RT2
> -------------------------------
> Lacroix : -0.8 / 15.8 / 13.4 / 16.2 / 2.0
> Aerospace : - 6.2 / 7.2 / 15.9 / 18.9 / 6.9
> E510 : 12.2 / 10.7 / 10.6 / 10.5 / 11.8
> Twin Quartz : 17.4 / 4.4 / -1.0 / 0.2 / 18.2
> Pulsar 8F56 : 28 / 22 / 14.0 / 14.5 / 36
> Longines VHP : - / - / - / 5.1 / -2.3
> 
> No big surprise, back to the previous Room Temperature numbers with some rather large swings for the Lacroix (-14)/Aerospace (-12) both ETA based and the TQ (+18). The TQ is old so it's not a big surprise, but the Lacroix/Aerospace look like they could do better. The ETA based Longines has a much smaller swing at -7, which I'm not going to complain about. The champ is still the E510 with a negligeable variation (-2), too bad it can't be adjusted by the user.
> 
> Non HEQ TAG Heuer F1 with the unique Calibre S on the router this week and it went from -26spy at room temp to -40spy. Similar absolute variation than the other ETA watches, except for the Longines, but the other way round.


I find the Aerospace the most unexpected (towards the 'somehow wild' side) 

The TAG is doing VERY, VERY well for a non-HEQ (judging after the graphs that I have seen around here and my own results with the white 7223) - but now I am testing a second non-HEQ on the router and planning on having a second 7223 and a kinetic after that, so we might also get more results for the 'non-TC camp' ;-)


----------



## webvan

*Re: Update on 2010-05-03*

Yes, it's certainly the best of my non HEQ, I've bee tracking other Quartz watches I have around, Casio from 1993, Avocet from 1995, Geonaute from 2008, etc...the Avocet is the best at +85spy and te Casio the worst at +185.

Not sure how TAG are achieving that, maybe a specially picked Quartz that reacts well to minute variation, that or I've hit its sweet spot (not sure I believe in the "sweet spot" theory actually looking at how my other Quartz watches behave), but then the change in temperature should have more of an impact. Right now it's not worse than the swing of the Miros or of the Aerospace. About the Aerospoace, I'm thinking some of the variations could be due to the LCD reading. This time I timed the jump of the minute hand (at 30 and 60) and will do that next week again.

I'm generally only interested in testing that has a practical use but since we're talking TC, I'm tempted to put some of my watches in the fridge to see how the TC works under stress and also what would happen to the TAG. The temperature in my freezer is 8C (46F) anyone if it would be risky to put a watch in there ? They do the COSC testing at that temperature so I'm thinking it wouldn't but they probably test the movements alone.


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Update on 2010-05-03*



webvan said:


> ...
> I'm generally only interested in testing that has a practical use but since we're talking TC, I'm tempted to put some of my watches in the fridge to see how the TC works under stress and also what would happen to the TAG. The temperature in my freezer is 8C (46F) anyone if it would be risky to put a watch in there ? They do the COSC testing at that temperature so I'm thinking it wouldn't but they probably test the movements alone.


That is a little weird - this morning I was thinking about precisely the same thing and the main point was 'what watches could I spare for two weeks' ;-) Since I am a little paranoid I will take a little care about placing all watches in small (closed) plastic bags with some desiccant and then probably try to do two quick 1-week tests from 12-18 and 19-25 of April ... the upside is that the temperature should be rather constant in the fridge ... the most likely to start with might be the 8F56 and the 8F33 but I am tempted to also add one ordinary quartz ... then I will be in Rome for a week so I might also leave in 'cold-test' the steel E510 (which while home I am wearing more often than I was expecting) and the 5E31 (which is my smallest watch and should go to such cold places only after other slightly tougher watches have proven the place to be 'safe enough' :-d )...


----------



## Oldtimer2

*Re: Update on 2010-05-03*

I've not done any low temperature tests on watches yet - and I've not yet got round to thinking this through! - but maybe there is a need to be careful of condensation issues?

I guess if a watch is fully sealed this wouldn't be a problem, but I wouldn't like condensation droplets to form _inside_ my most favourite vintage timepieces (the ones I intend testing!).. Maybe just a question of putting them in a sealable poly bag with a fresh silica gel sachet and then let them come gently up to temperature on taking out of fridge before opening the bag?

Perhaps not an issue anyway?? Just a thought.


----------



## Oldtimer2

*Re: Update on 2010-05-03*

I see Catalin has come back on this condensation aspect as well. Something I can say for sure, is to be wary of using any of those little silica dessicant bags from previous watch/camera purchases one might have collected through time; and put to one side as they'll maybe come in useful someday...

I did once make some measurements with a sealable polybag, an electronic hygrometer and silica gel bags (some bags reused - and some fresh from a supplier). The fresh ones work supremely well!! But any that have been exposed to air for any length of time (surprise , surprise) DON'T! . They might look the same, but... I gather they can be heated to redry, but I'd thoroughly recommend fresh ones if unsure!!


----------



## Eeeb

*Re: Update on 2010-05-03*



Oldtimer2 said:


> ... I gather they can be heated to redry, but I'd thoroughly recommend fresh ones if unsure!!


I bet microwaving them would work... (but I take no responsibility if it doesn't!)


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Update on 2010-05-03*



Oldtimer2 said:


> I see Catalin has come back on this condensation aspect as well. Something I can say for sure, is to be wary of using any of those little silica dessicant bags from previous watch/camera purchases one might have collected through time; and put to one side as they'll maybe come in useful someday...
> 
> I did once make some measurements with a sealable polybag, an electronic hygrometer and silica gel bags (some bags reused - and some fresh from a supplier). The fresh ones work supremely well!! But any that have been exposed to air for any length of time (surprise , surprise) DON'T! . They might look the same, but... I gather they can be heated to redry, but I'd thoroughly recommend fresh ones if unsure!!


Good point, I was thinking about microwaving some older silica gel but I have one full week to find something new and fresh ;-)


----------



## Catalin

*Very small update on 2010-04-04 ...*

I have done a very quick reading for some ordinary quartz (a Pulsar that I might place first in the fridge), and I was also curios on how the twinquartz was doing, so I did a quick reading on that too ...

The results don't look too good , around -60s/year on the warm router (compared to close to zero on room temperature) - I am leaving it there for another week to confirm the results but overall my feeling starts to be more and more that the second trimmer might also need a rotation - maybe very similar to the one in the main trimmer ... luckily I kept pictures so I will be able to have some generic idea if indeed that -60s/y is confirmed ...


----------



## Catalin

*Update on 2010-04-11*

The raw data is available at http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20100411.pdf and the 'quick preview' follows:

- the 8F56 (SBQJ015) is still somewhere in the normal range but the error is a little higher on the last interval than the one expected based on intervals at a similar temperature - we will see in 2 weeks if it was mostly a 'fluke' (eventually from DST change) or it was a real rate change;

- the titanium E510 is back from service but it just starts an interval so no info yet, same for the new SBCM023/8F35; the steel E510/E410 pair is pretty much in the normal range;

- the 9923 king quartz confirmed the about 60 seconds difference from room to warm; unfortunately I could not rotate the second trimmer (the 'before' picture can be seen at http://caranfil.org/tz/R0018863b.jpg ) and I might need to do a quick visit at the local watchmaker tomorrow since also another watch (the 6M25 SUS multifunction) needs a new battery (SR927W, just like the 9923 twinquartz);

- the 5E31, the 'Ti klingon' 8F33 and the white 7223 are all back to their expected values (after 2 'warm router' intervals);

- the 'smooth seconds' caliber F230 is the only one that provides new data - it changed from around +60s/y at room temperature to around +30s/y on the warm router - which is a surprisingly good difference (the expected value was more in the 60-120 s/y);

- a very low cost Pulsar was added to the test for one week at room temperature and is now in the fridge inside two well-closed plastic bags ;-) ; I'll have a look tomorrow if it is still alive, if yes I hope we'll see some values in a week or so.

On the warm router are now the 9923 (on which I still hope to get a temperature-adjustment from the second trimmer), the SBQJ015 (to see if the latest result was a 'fluke') and the latest SBCM023 (which I expect to wear a lot and as such measuring it for 'room temperature' will not provide very accurate results).


----------



## webvan

*Re: Update on 2010-05-03*

Thanks for the update, here are my numbers for the week, room temperature for all but the TAG F1 Calibre S.

------------------------------
Watch : RT1/RW1/RW2/RW3/RT2/RT3
-------------------------------
Lacroix : -0.8 / 15.8 / 13.4 / 16.2 / 2.0 / 2.0
Aerospace : - 6.2 / 7.2 / 15.9 / 18.9 / 6.9 / 6.8
E510 : 12.2 / 10.7 / 10.6 / 10.5 / 11.8 / 11.4
Twin Quartz : 17.4 / 4.4 / -1.0 / 0.2 / 18.2 / 14.1
Pulsar 8F56 : 28 / 22 / 14.0 / 14.5 / 36 / 37.1
Longines VHP : - / - / - / 5.1 / -2.3 / -3.7

Nothing spectacular, the Aerospace is far from its original room temperature numbers as if the warm temperature had somehow modified it's behavior, can't see how, but...

TAG F1 at -57spy for its second week on the router, vs -40spy last week and -20spy at room temp. Certainly not the stability of the HEQs. To me that's really the big "value" of HEQs, predictability, regardless of their base rate, they seem to handle small temperature variations much better than non HEQs.


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Update on 2010-05-03*



webvan said:


> ...
> Nothing spectacular, the Aerospace is far from its original room temperature numbers as if the warm temperature had somehow modified it's behavior, can't see how, but...
> ...


OK, this is totally crazy but after (shorter or longer, but always longer than 2 weeks) intervals on the router my feeling was that MOST of my watches were then showing unusual results - see my comments from today on the SBQJ015 (8F56) and of course the results on the 3 Exceed watches !!!

A MUCH smaller effect is seen on the 'rather old HEQ' - the 5E31 and the 8F33 (which are each well over 10 years) - I would normally say that there is something almost like 'accelerated aging' ... I am now curious on the long term, especially with the results from the 3 Exceed ...


----------



## Catalin

*Quick update on 2010-04-18*

I will start with the rather 'bad news' - the titanium E510 that returned last week back from 'service' is showing basically no change from before!!! (I will have to send an email to the Ujiie shop, but my guess is that their local service center might have neglected to tell them that they are unable to adjust E510 and the service center probably decided to avoid sending the watch to factory with an error under 24s/y ). However on this subject I am starting to give more credit to the eternal complaint that we hear from ppaulusz - it is indeed rather pathetic to see that apparently a single place in the world (if even that one) can adjust the E510 and that even Citizen service centers in the heart of Japan don't have the guts to admit that they lack that capacity ...

Now to the better news - the second trimmer on the 9923 was indeed rotated by my local watchmaker and I did a video measurement on that day and today after 4 days - the good news are that the trimmer generated precisely the kind of results I was expecting, the bad news is that just like the main trimmer in the 9923 it is incredibly 'tight', a rotation of like just 15 degrees generated a change of about 200s/year, but now the second trimmer is easy to adjust even with my primitive skills (and tools) and I believe I might have placed it at some more acceptable value (I expect this trimmer to generate non-linear adjustments) - we will see after another 'warm week' and then after another 1-2 'room weeks' I will also have to check if the rate at room temperature was not changed too much - I hope so, since as you might remember (with a lot of luck) I managed to get under +2s/y ;-)

The other good news are that the SBCM023 *Black Ninja* also seems a very decent 8F caliber, after 1 'warm week' it suggests around -7 s/y which is very close to what I have seen in the SBQJ015 *Travelzilla* - but we will have to also see how it does for another warm week, and then two weeks at room temperature ...

Finally the 'fridge results' - the Pulsar was like +80 s/y at room temperature and is showing an astounding -220 s/y at fridge temperature for a total difference of around 300 s/y over just about 20 degrees Celsius of difference - next week I will be tempted to place there the 8F33 and maybe the steel E510 ...


----------



## webvan

*Re: Quick update on 2010-04-18*

Very annoying indeed if you get a bad E510 or if it becomes bad, touching wood for mine that's at +11spy regardless of the temperature (Room and Router at least).

Good news for the TQ, so the first trimmer adjusts the raw rate and the second one the "temperature sensitivity" ? Odd no one had never documented that, maybe because it's difficult to tune it!

Didn't put my numbers for the past week as they are basically the same as last week. One more room temperature week and I'll put a couple in the fridge at 8C. Ah yes, the TAG F1 Calibre S went from -57spy at Router Temp to -12spy at Room Temp, so it's not a "wearer".

I have a new 8F56 coming this week, the Sportura SLT047P, hope it's as good as your 8Fxx's !


----------



## Eeeb

*Re: Quick update on 2010-04-18*



webvan said:


> ... the first trimmer adjusts the raw rate and the second one the "temperature sensitivity" ? Odd no one had never documented that, maybe because it's difficult to tune it!...


What do you suppose they mean by temperature sensitivity? If it flattens the curve and the other shifts the curve then these TQ are the most adjustable of the HEQ.


----------



## ppaulusz

*Re: Quick update on 2010-04-18*



Eeeb said:


> ...If it flattens the curve and the other shifts the curve then these TQ are the most adjustable of the HEQ.


If that is the case then we still have a problem: both adjustments are analog - they lack the stability and reliability of modern day digital calibration options.


----------



## webvan

*Re: Quick update on 2010-04-18*



Eeeb said:


> What do you suppose they mean by temperature sensitivity? If it flattens the curve and the other shifts the curve then these TQ are the most adjustable of the HEQ.


Who's "they" ? I was merely commenting on the fact that the use of the trimmers appeared to be undocumented ? Or are they ?


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Quick update on 2010-04-18*



Eeeb said:


> What do you suppose they mean by temperature sensitivity? If it flattens the curve and the other shifts the curve then these TQ are the most adjustable of the HEQ.


That does not seem impossible (and I have now a rather simplified model of how that works which I will describe once it becomes proven to an acceptable level), but given the extreme sensitivity of the trimmers and the rather complex procedure (potentially over a long amount of time) it might not be for the faint of heart


----------



## Eeeb

*Re: Quick update on 2010-04-18*



webvan said:


> Who's "they" ? I was merely commenting on the fact that the use of the trimmers appeared to be undocumented ? Or are they ?


 "Good news for the TQ, so the first trimmer adjusts the raw rate and the second one the "temperature sensitivity" ?"

I misunderstood the above to mean you knew the second trimmer was for temperature sensitivity. Based on the top remark, I now assume that remark was speculation. Correct?

Knowing how capacitors affect rate, I would GUESS the second one was just a more gross adjustment and the first trimmer was a fine adjustment.

Of course, as George points out, "fine" may be a bit of an overstatement... but, when I was making my adjustments, I did find the adjustment to be not as sensitive as the one trimmer system used on the original quartz movements.


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Quick update on 2010-04-18*



Eeeb said:


> "
> ...
> Knowing how capacitors affect rate, I would GUESS the second one was just a more gross adjustment and the first trimmer was a fine adjustment.
> ...


That is also not an impossible idea, but there is another simpler possibility which makes slightly more sense, which could be easily mistaken for a gross adjustment in the absence of a very clear approach but which indeed adjusts for temperature - as I said I am first checking that (in 2 weeks it should be clear) and then posting a detailed description (well, a shorter one if the model is proven wrong ;-) ).


----------



## Catalin

*Update on 2010-04-25*

The data is at http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20100425.pdf and the 'highlights' are:

- nothing unexpected overall;

- the titanium E510 was definitely not adjusted :-| and together with the 8F33 goes to the fridge for 1-2 weeks;

- the 8F35 seems to be doing quite well and so far in the same range as my 8F56 - with a small negative error when warm, probably a small positive one at room temperature (next 2 weeks);

- the Pulsar from the fridge was in a range so 'unstable' that even the fridge temperature was not constant enough - but overall almost 300s/year difference from room to fridge.

Other than the 8F35 the only good news seem to be that the 9923 Twin Quartz seems to act as I was expecting and I have rather high hopes for that - as you might remember the original rate difference room/warm was in the range of 60s, difference which was maintained even after adjusting main rate from 120s/y to well under 10s/y - however it seems that now I have also adjusted that temperature response (to that room/warm change) to something around 10s, but now I am trying to get the main rate again around 0, and that might take a few other weeks - but probably in around 2 weeks I will be able to come with a good description of the procedure - the one certain thing is that both trimmers are INCREDIBLY sensitive :think:


----------



## Codeman60

Catalin said:


> ...
> The Aerospace I guess you have to read on the LCD screen - how fast is the transition on that one ? I did myself a test with an older Citizen and the time it takes to switch the LCD is long (and I placed a note on that in the thread), but now I realize that in 20-30 years the LCD technology might have evolved a little ;-)
> ...


Using a 30fps camera, my 2010 Aerospace takes somewhere between 2 and 3 frames to fully show a 1 second change, or about 0.067-0.099s. Assuming that Breitling did not take LCD latency into account, I'm taking my measurements from the first frame where the LCD has begun to change (that also shows a clear time from EarthSunX). That should be more indicative of the exact time when the chip sent the signal to the LCD, so it should effectively remove most of the LCD latency from the measurement.

Although it won't be until next week before I have a full week for my first difference, after the first 63:23:06 (hh:mm:ss) period, I had a 0.001s gain, which translates to a 3.317 spy. 63 hours, obviously, is too short for a reliable difference, but it's at least encouraging.

Thanks again for making EarthSunX available. I also switched my time service to NTPDate using several of the closest stratum one servers that I can access. I'm sticking with W32Time except for when I'm measuring my Aerospace, but NTPDate running every few seconds has gone a long way towards keeping my clock accurate enough to trust EarthSunX's millisecond resolution. Thanks for mentioning NTPDate in the other thread as well, Catalin!:-!

P.S. I won't be attempting to measure mine as a function of temperature. I'm more interested in knowing how well the TC works in relation to how I normally wear my Aerospace throughout the day. That's more useful to me than knowing how it works at near constant temperatures. Since I've only had it a few weeks, I'm wearing it every day, leaving it on the dresser at night. After the warranty expires in 2 years and I have a solid history of how it performs, I may remove the back and trying regulating it.


----------



## Catalin

Codeman60 said:


> Using a 30fps camera, my 2010 Aerospace takes somewhere between 2 and 3 frames to fully show a 1 second change, or about 0.067-0.099s. Assuming that Breitling did not take LCD latency into account, I'm taking my measurements from the first frame where the LCD has begun to change (that also shows a clear time from EarthSunX). That should be more indicative of the exact time when the chip sent the signal to the LCD, so it should effectively remove most of the LCD latency from the measurement.
> 
> Although it won't be until next week before I have a full week for my first difference, after the first 63:23:06 (hh:mm:ss) period, I had a 0.001s gain, which translates to a 3.317 spy. 63 hours, obviously, is too short for a reliable difference, but it's at least encouraging.
> 
> Thanks again for making EarthSunX available. I also switched my time service to NTPDate using several of the closest stratum one servers that I can access. I'm sticking with W32Time except for when I'm measuring my Aerospace, but NTPDate running every few seconds has gone a long way towards keeping my clock accurate enough to trust EarthSunX's millisecond resolution. Thanks for mentioning NTPDate in the other thread as well, Catalin!:-!
> 
> P.S. I won't be attempting to measure mine as a function of temperature. I'm more interested in knowing how well the TC works in relation to how I normally wear my Aerospace throughout the day. That's more useful to me than knowing how it works at near constant temperatures. Since I've only had it a few weeks, I'm wearing it every day, leaving it on the dresser at night. After the warranty expires in 2 years and I have a solid history of how it performs, I may remove the back and trying regulating it.


Yes, IMHO right now with NTPDate correctly set and a decent internet connection the main limit remaining is the monitor (and to a smaller extent video) framerate.

On the measurements - of course that the 'personal average' is the most relevant timing measurement, however in some way the 'limits' on how far it can go under normal conditions might also give important clues - if the entire difference from warm to room temperature is like 3-4 seconds/year is quite different than when the difference is 15-20s/y ... which however 'in my book' still are perfectly good for models which don't have 1-hour jump ;-)

Also the warm/room difference is very relevant on adjusting twin-quartz models - see my next post ...


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Update on 2010-04-25*

Quick update after one week (without a separate PDF):

- the US-made 8F33 from the fridge seems to confirm a shape somehow similar to the one from the thread at https://www.watchuseek.com/showthread.php?t=366862 - and at around 5 degrees Celsius it has moved to the negative territory (around -15s/y, from about +75s/y at room temperature and +65s/y when warm);

- the titanium E510 from the fridge has shown a MUCH smaller change - only 4-6s/y slower than at room temperature - quite impressive :-!

- the latest 8F35 JP-made SBCM023 'Black Ninja' seems to be very similar in results to the 8F56 JP-made SBQJ015 'Travelzilla' - actually maybe even a little better than that one, something like -6s/y warm and +8s/y room temperature - the major question remains how that will last on the long-term :-d

- the twin-quartz seems to have been indeed a little adjusted - but I might need to still do some other minor changes on that one since it seems that the potential might be very good ... anyway some measurements on the warm temperatures now seem to be in the plan for the next weeks on the old King (Quartz) ;-) ...


----------



## webvan

*Re: Update on 2010-04-25*

That E510 is really impressive, will put mine in the fridge next week maybe. I haven't been able to track down full blown djwquest comparisons at low temps but seems the E510 would be hard to beat.

What are the years of your stellar performing 8Fxx bases watches ?

Skipping a week for my accuracy testing, will report back next week.


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Update on 2010-04-25*



webvan said:


> That E510 is really impressive, will put mine in the fridge next week maybe. I haven't been able to track down full blown djwquest comparisons at low temps but seems the E510 would be hard to beat.
> 
> What are the years of your stellar performing 8Fxx bases watches ?
> 
> Skipping a week for my accuracy testing, will report back next week.


Well, E510 is most likely the champion in the 'under 1000$' category, but a 9F (or 8J) might be better - but without the perpetual calendar or solar part ;-)

The 8F56 is 2008-6 and the 8F35 is 2009-9 , but the (very little) info around plus my own experience with the E510 suggests problems start to grow at some point in the 3rd to 5th year since actual production ... we'll see about that ... I am already regretting that I did not start timing measurements on both the 8F56 and E510 about 12 months ago  (the 8F33 is from 2000). Also I would not call the 8F performance 'stellar' - after all the E510 in the 'normal range' is about 5 times less sensitive, and more than 10-20 times better if we include the fridge results :-d However the initial factory adjustment seems to be critical for 8F models - but for that the two JP-made that I have seem to be indeed 'as good as it gets' - last week I was away for 5 days out of 7 with the 8F56, and the average in that rather ordinary pattern for that week was under 2 seconds/year ...


----------



## webvan

*Re: Update on 2010-04-25*

Very recent models then, if I were sure that it's because they were tuned/picked more closely I might go for an SBQJ015, bit risky at this point.

Yes I meant "stellar" as compared to most of the other 8Fxx based watches out there. Would be interesting to see how the 8F56 or 8F35 cope with the fridge since the 8F56 showed little sensitivity to the router temperature if memory serves...and also the 8F33 survived the Fridge test ;-)


----------



## Eeeb

*Re: Update on 2010-04-25*



webvan said:


> That E510 is really impressive, will put mine in the fridge next week maybe. I haven't been able to track down full blown djwquest comparisons at low temps but seems the E510 would be hard to beat.
> ...


It is indeed. A while back I posted YouTube movies showing it doing thermocompensation in real time!


----------



## dwjquest

*Re: Update on 2010-04-25*



webvan said:


> That E510 is really impressive, will put mine in the fridge next week maybe. I haven't been able to track down full blown djwquest comparisons at low temps but seems the E510 would be hard to beat.
> 
> What are the years of your stellar performing 8Fxx bases watches ?
> 
> Skipping a week for my accuracy testing, will report back next week.


Here is what I found from my E510.


----------



## webvan

*Re: Update on 2010-04-25*

Very interesting, thanks, pretty unusual shape it seems with two "bells in reverse", and the best performer comparing to https://www.watchuseek.com/showthread.php?t=293835 ?


----------



## dwjquest

*Re: Update on 2010-04-25*



webvan said:


> Very interesting, thanks, pretty unusual shape it seems with two "bells in reverse", and the best performer comparing to https://www.watchuseek.com/showthread.php?t=293835 ?


On the same scale as that figure.


----------



## webvan

*Re: Update on 2010-04-25*

A belated thanks for the enlarged version.

Had put back my HEQs on the router and the results have not changed compared to the previous warm runs, fortunately...except for the Breitling Aerospace that seems to have completely lost the plot at now +55 for two weeks in a row vs +18spy previously. Not sure how that could have happened but since the bezel isn't turning anymore I'm wondering if it didn"t get bumped into something...not sure how I could have missed that, but who knows. It's back at room temp for a week to see if it settles down.

The other watches are now in the fridge at about 5deg celsius...I normally don't believe in testing that doesn't have a connection to real life use, but I just couldn't help myself ;-)


----------



## Codeman60

Here are the results of the first 4 weeks of measuring my 2010 Breitling Aerospace:










The total interval, C3 (sum of column B values, starting with C5), is shown as a decimal value in days. D3 is the sum of the column D values starting with D5. E3 is calculated as D3/C3. The SPY value, F3, is calculated as D3*365/C3. G3 is the STDEV of the values in column F, starting with F5.

I'm measuring from the first frame which shows a change to the time display using a 30 fps camera. Since the camera is only 30 fps, the margin of error in my readings is roughly 0.033 s. It's going to be quite a while before the drift is large enough to make that margin of error insignificant. Too bad I don't have a 300 fps camera. Heck, I don't even know how much variance there is in my camera's stated 30 fps rate. Obviously, without a much faster video camera, the video method can't provide accurate SPY values any faster than the other methods. Darn that weakest link!


----------



## Catalin

Codeman60 said:


> Here are the results of the first 4 weeks of measuring my 2010 Breitling Aerospace:
> ...
> I'm measuring from the first frame which shows a change to the time display using a 30 fps camera. Since the camera is only 30 fps, the margin of error in my readings is roughly 0.033 s. It's going to be quite a while before the drift is large enough to make that margin of error insignificant. Too bad I don't have a 300 fps camera. Heck, I don't even know how much variance there is in my camera's stated 30 fps rate. Obviously, without a much faster video camera, the video method can't provide accurate SPY values any faster than the other methods. Darn that weakest link!


Very good start, a few quick things/ideas:

- set the display at maximum brightness and use a *strong *light on the watch itself - while the 30 fps will not change, the exposure time can get lower than 1/30s and ideally (maybe also with a few more recordings) you will start 'seeing' the 60 fps of the video display!

- the way AVERAGE() and STDEV() are implemented implies that all elements have the same weight - which is OK with intervals of (very) similar size but you might still see a very small difference if you calculate the AVERAGE() on column F and compare with the 'actual average' at F3; that also takes place on STDEV() and might become relevant if the size of the interval varies a lot;

- the standard deviation that you see can be (obviously) from differences in temperature / wearing pattern but also is linked to the length of the interval since ALL measurement errors (including fps and atomic sync stuff) are just scaled to 1 year; the difference can be also seen if you just consider the 4 * 1-week intervals from above as just 2 * 2 weeks - the average will still be the same, but STDEV() is now 0.4 ;-) ...


----------



## Codeman60

I appreciate the info.

I already have sufficient light to see some banding due to my display's 60 Hz refresh rate. Given that the avg of column F varies from F3 by only -0.003 s, I'm confident that my intervals are consistent enough to not be introducing sizable errors in the calculations. They are certainly far smaller than the error inherent to the 30 fps rate.

I don't see the value in 2x2 measurements instead of 4x1. I'm more interested in the stdev of the entire set of my measurements of SPY rather than finding a way to artificially reduce it by data manipulation. If that's what I wanted, I'd take the stdev of column E, which is only 0.00442. That looks a lot smaller, yet has the exact same meaning in relation to column E as 1.612 does to column F, which is actually just column E * 365. Besides, with a sample size of just 4 readings, stdev doesn't really mean anything yet no matter what it's based on. It will, however, be meaningful sooner using 4x1 rather than 2x2, since the sample size will always be double.

As I mentioned earlier, I have no interest in evaluating effects of temp. My wear pattern, however, is quite consistent. On around 6:30 AM every day, off around 9:30 PM every night. Breitling claims 15 SPY regardless of temp and/or wear pattern. So far, it looks like my Aerospace is well within that claim. The real test will be to see how it does over a full year. That reminds me - I just converted my times to UTC so that daylight saving time changes don't affect the results. It's going to be nice to be able to change my Aerospace for DST without having to reset the seconds.

Hmmm...since you guys are measuring temp effects, maybe I shouldn't post my results in this thread. It could get confusing...:think:


----------



## Catalin

Codeman60 said:


> ...
> I don't see the value in 2x2 measurements instead of 4x1. I'm more interested in the stdev of the entire set of my measurements of SPY rather than finding a way to artificially reduce it by data manipulation. If that's what I wanted, I'd take the stdev of column E, which is only 0.00442. That looks a lot smaller, yet has the exact same meaning in relation to column E as 1.612 does to column F, which is actually just column E * 365.
> ...
> As I mentioned earlier, I have no interest in evaluating effects of temp. My wear pattern, however, is quite consistent.
> ...
> Hmmm...since you guys are measuring temp effects, maybe I shouldn't post my results in this thread. It could get confusing...:think:


It is very important to understand that there is nothing 'artificial' in *looking* at 2x2 vs. 4x1 - (if the wearing pattern and outside temperature are not totally wild) the numbers confirm two well-known things - first that there IS a certain rather bound measurement error which appears twice as big when scaling *52 times than scaling *26 times (which immediately gets your STDEV from 1.4 s/y to about 0.7 s/y), and second that of course longer intervals will 'average' the results of temperature / pattern changes (and that's how it gets from 0.7 s/y to 0.4 s/y). Those (and the 1 second rounding) also explain why our numbers are not directly comparable with the bigger database from _Mechanikus_ ...

Also note that STDDEV of column E might be 0.00442 but that is just seconds/day, while the STDDEV from F is the real seconds/year ... measurement units can be very relevant (and s/y is easy to relate to the actual yearly rate of the watch) ;-)

Anyway the standard deviation makes more sense over rather similar patterns - that's why I am 'qualifying' each of my intervals with some extra info (on estimated temperature), and for instance if I calculate the (length-adjusted) standard deviation for my 8F33 only for room-temperature intervals I get 0.37 s/y while if I calculate over 'full normal range' I get around 4.8 s/y and over ALL (wildly-variate, including 2 weeks in the fridge) intervals I get 23 s/y - all numbers have very good and precise meaning (and there is NOTHING artificial about them), the first number is mostly an indication of the measurement limits of my current setup while the second and third numbers are really a measurement of how good the 'thermal insensitivity' is in 8F33 (the second is also quite consistent with the 10s/y delta over the room/worn interval that I have seen in this 8F33 - which is better than ANY of my other newer 8F models).


----------



## Codeman60

It's too bad that you didn't understand my last post, especially my statement regarding stdev of columns E and F.

I won't post anymore in your thread, since we obviously have different goals. Have fun.


----------



## Catalin

Codeman60 said:


> It's too bad that you didn't understand my last post, especially my statement regarding stdev of columns E and F.
> 
> I won't post anymore in your thread, since we obviously have different goals. Have fun.


I hope you didn't misunderstood my comments or felt offended in any way - there is certainly no 'competition' to get 'smaller numbers' and all measured data is equally welcome (with or without any specially-induced temperature change) and my comments were directed less at you and more to visitors from outside which could see the raw numbers but might miss some of the explanations behind them ...

If there is any 'competition' it is probably in the amount of data gathered, but on that matter is hard to catch-up with _Mechanikus_ which has a serious head-start ;-)


----------



## ronalddheld

We need collaberation here, since the watch manufacturers will not tell us the technical details we need to know.


----------



## Catalin

*Update for 2010-05-23*

The latest data is available at http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20100523.pdf and 'cliff-notes' below:

- there was a problem with my home desktop and as such last two weekends I only updated the minimum amount of watches using my notebook (meaning getting the two watches out of the fridge and extra tweaking on the twin-quartz) but yesterday things were OK and I did the videos and today I interpreted those and now posted the PDF;

- the fridge results were not very consistent for each of the two consecutive weeks, showing that my fridge is used too much :-d ; however the range was pretty much the expected one;

- no unexpected results on the other watches;

- no other watch in the fridge for the moment, maybe in two weeks time;

- the SBCM023 (8F35) seems to have been as lucky as the SBCJ015 (8F56);

- the 5M62 'kinetzilla' is showing amazing consistency so far and probably explains the very very good results seen in springrive models - normally the watch is worn in a rather consistent way about 3 times/week for like 4-6 hours each time with the rest of the time around 22C; however for one week out the last 4 I was away in Rome and it was not worn at all but the week after that I had to wear it a little more to recharge it back to the max - and apparently the results were pretty much in line with the previous weeks;

- the two non-TC watches from the warm router have both shown very good results - just about -20 s/y from room to warm (each);

- the 6M25 (SUS multifunction) with the new battery is showing a very-very small but reasonably consistent difference to my eye - we will see about that, but for the next 2 weeks it goes to the warm router;

- the other watches on the warm router are the 8F56 and the twin-quartz - which after a huge amount of 'tweaking' might now finally be in a decent range - I am quite curious about the results on the warm router!


----------



## webvan

*Re: Update for 2010-05-23*

Some data from the fridge ! After a week between 5 and 8 degrees celsius this is how my HEQs behaved (fridge/room/router) :

- Citizen E510 : 3/11/9
- Lacroix Miros : -14/2/17
- Longines VHP : -22/-5/6
- Seiko TQ 9256 : 34/15/0
- Seiko 8F56 (1999) : -25/55/15 (corrected)

Pretty linear, except the E510 which is consistent with dwjquet's "double-bell" graph.

I've also added some vintage HEQs : (Room/Router)
- Omega 1310 (32Khz) : -67/-345 (rated at 60spy originally)
- Omega 1510 (2.4Mhz) : -80/2 (rated at 10spy originally).

I'm a bit disappointed by the 1510, I was expected less thermal sensitivity with such a high frequency.


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Update for 2010-05-23*



webvan said:


> ...
> - Citizen E510 : 3/11/9
> - Lacroix Miros : -14/2/17
> - Longines VHP : -22/-5/6
> - Seiko TQ 9256 : 34/15/0
> - Seiko 8F56 (1999) : -25/15/55
> 
> Pretty linear, except the E510 which is consistent with dwjquet's "double-bell" graph.


Very interesting, the one that I consider most surprising is the 8F56 - all my 8F (including the 8F33 from 2000) get slower when moved from room to warm while this one gets seriously faster !!!



webvan said:


> I've also added some vintage HEQs : (Room/Router)
> - Omega 1310 (32Khz) : -67/-345 (rated at 60spy originally)
> - Omega 1510 (2.4Mhz) : -80/2 (rated at 10spy originally).
> 
> I'm a bit disappointed by the 1510, I was expected less thermal sensitivity with such a high frequency.


Well, the things related to watch aging are a chapter which only now starts to get written (very slowly) ;-)

On the 1510 I think it is indeed surprising - I wonder if it is related to some very large capacitor or trimmer being used, and which after aging is now waaay too sensitive to temperature ... but it might also be related to how some 2.4 MHz quartz crystals are actually aging - but I tend to remember that I have seen a graph which was looking very good so it certainly is not a general rule ... have you ever opened it ?


----------



## webvan

*Re: Update for 2010-05-23*

Yep and since it's just been serviced it looks great ;-) It's a single crystal so it does its own "regulation". Looking at the certificats of the OMC's (1515 and 1516) I'm not certain absolute accuracy was a requirement since I've seen numbers like 0.456/day and dickstar commented on thermal sensitivity, see : https://www.watchuseek.com/showpost.php?p=3040253&postcount=119

Do you remember where you saw that graph? The only one I found was here : https://www.watchuseek.com/showthread.php?t=211286 over a limited range (80/96F), warm->warmer. I asked dwjquest in another thread if he'd done a 50/100F test of a 151x but he explained his setup was having problems picking up the signal so he was looking for a workaround.

As for the 8F56, sorry, got mixed up in the numbers, should read : 
-25, 55, 15 : not linear either, will check again next week with the other 8F56 that went in this time. The one I used last week didn't like the cold that much (went into EOL mode with a one year old battery)


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Update for 2010-05-23*



webvan said:


> ...
> Do you remember where you saw that graph? The only one I found was here : https://www.watchuseek.com/showthread.php?t=211286 over a limited range (80/96F), warm->warmer. I asked dwjquest in another thread if he'd done a 50/100F test of a 151x but he explained his setup was having problems picking up the signal so he was looking for a workaround.
> 
> As for the 8F56, sorry, got mixed up in the numbers, should read :
> -25, 55, 15 : not linear either, will check again next week with the other 8F56 that went in this time. The one I used last week didn't like the cold that much (went into EOL mode with a one year old battery)


That is the graph, but I was under the impression it was going over a larger range of temperatures ... :think:

Maybe next week I will also try the 8F56 to the fridge - I remember a report that like 4 out of 4 were having problems in the cold, but I was interpreting that as freezer (under -5C) and not fridge (+5C) ...


----------



## webvan

*Re: Update for 2010-05-23*

Yes I'd read that too. Well it seems mine had lost its calendar settings so I just reset them, without looking at the manual (scary, eh !) wonder whether the other one will have the same problem.


----------



## labslave28

These are the timing results for my Seiko 8F32 SLL075P1 which I received as an anniversary gift from my wife last October. This is my first HEQ so far. I wore this watch 12 hours a day for 3 months with night storage at room temperature. To my disappointment but not surprise, it didn't meet the specification of +/- 20 sec/yr. The watch gained 0.1 sec/day with this wearing pattern. I left the watch at room temperature for the next three months and it gained 5 sec/month. I researched having pattern cutting done to improve performance but haven't found anyone interested in doing it for me. Since it is a "gray market" watch from Ebay, I have no Seiko warranty and the seller isn't interested doing the pattern cutting for me. I was making preparations to cut the pattern myself when dwjquest posted his results on Seiko 8F movements. Also webvan had posted about placing a watch on a warm router surface to alter the rate. With this inspiration, I decided to do some testing to clarify my situation.
At first I planned to place my watch on top of my router for 10 days and determine the rate. However, my router didn't feel very warm to my touch but the cable modem did and I left the watch on top of cable modem for ten days. Since I didn't have an accurate way to measure the temperature, I borrowed a laser IR thermometer from a metallurgical engineer I work part time for. I determined the back of the watch was at 100F on the cable modem and the watch lost 1.8 sec in 10 days. I then placed the watch for 10 days in the watchbox at room temperature (73-77F). After the 10 days at room temperature the watch gained back almost exactly the 1.8 sec it had lost during the heated testing. I decided to do a 30 day test wearing the watch 12 hours per day (86-88F) and placing on the router at night (93-95F). During this test I used the stopwatch method initially to measure the rate and at 15 days I used both the stopwatch and video methods. I used Time.gov as reference for the stopwatch method and used the Meinberg NTP Daemon for Windows to sync the system clock for Catalin's EarthSunX used for the video method. My daughter is a professional web designer and Linux expert provided me with some local university timeservers to sync with.
With this wear pattern after 10 days the watch was operating within specification at 12-14 sec/yr by the stopwatch method for the remaining 20 days of the test (Graph 1). Graph 2 shows the stopwatch method results with the upper and lower limits as +/- 1 Std Dev. The video method results over the last 15 days of testing yielded slightly higher rate of 13-14 sec/ yr (see Graph 3). Graph 4 shows a comparison of the stopwatch method and the video method.
I am glad to see this watch is capable of running within the annual rate specification. The determined 0.18 sec/day room temperature rate shows that pattern cutting could be used to correct the annual rate for a normal wearing pattern. During this test , I purchased the hardware and built a thermostatically controlled heated storage box for this watch. My goal is to store it at a temperature to maintain its rate within specification until I want to wear it. I'm running a ten day test at 90F and will post results after.


----------



## Hans Moleman

Nice testing!
I like the multiple tests for confirmation.
How much better a graph works to get an instantaneous grasp of the spread of the data.

I wonder how HEQ are stored?

Better start a new thread an that.


----------



## Catalin

labslave28 said:


> ...
> I am glad to see this watch is capable of running within the annual rate specification. The determined 0.18 sec/day room temperature rate shows that pattern cutting could be used to correct the annual rate for a normal wearing pattern. During this test , I purchased the hardware and built a thermostatically controlled heated storage box for this watch. My goal is to store it at a temperature to maintain its rate within specification until I want to wear it. I'm running a ten day test at 90F and will post results after.


Very good and interesting results !!!

When was your SLL075 built ? (first two digits/characters of the serial number on the back).


----------



## labslave28

Catalin

The first two digits of the s/n are "96"


----------



## Catalin

labslave28 said:


> Catalin
> 
> The first two digits of the s/n are "96"


Probably June 2009 or 1999 ...


----------



## Catalin

*Some results from 2010-06-06 ...*

The latest numbers can be found at http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20100606.pdf and below a few quick ideas:

- nothing really unusual;

- however the temperature variations for my setups seem to be clearly bigger now than in the winter - when the house thermostat was providing far more consistent results; even on the warm router there seems to have been some changes for the watches placed 'crown up', I am now looking at 'face up' which provides better/bigger thermal contact but probably a slightly higher resulting temperature;

- from the warm spot the Seiko 6M25 had surprisingly good results, I would say under 10 s/y delta (60s/y room, 50-55s/y warm); however since that watch has no user calibration the results can not be applied to bring the total accuracy in the HEQ range :-(

- I would also note that I also seem to have at least 2-3 other (than the 6M25) non-HEQ models that seem to have a warm/room delta in the range of 20s/y - a Citizen Ecodrive 0810 and the second Seiko 7223 (which already have the numbers in the PDF), plus the kinetic 5M62 where it is only a hunch; from all the above the 7223 is the only which can be adjusted :-s

- to test the above hunch the kinetzilla goes now for 2 weeks on the warm router, together with the 8F35;

- the Seiko 8F56 'travelzilla' is now in the fridge together with the 'smooth-seconds beater' Citizen F230 - I just checked and those are still ticking after one night (since the reports floating around have slightly scared me :-d )

- the twin-quartz has now a delta under 15s/y (it started over 60s/y delta and over 120s/y error) but is still under observation and I might try two other small corrections, but first I will have to see for another 2 weeks the rate at room temperature.


----------



## Catalin

*Quick partial update on 2010-06-13 ...*

I got the two watches (8F56 and F230) out of the fridge (it makes little sense to force their batteries for too much) and I also did a quick measurement on the other two from the warm router:

- 8F56 has the only impressive fridge result - like -18.6 s/y in the fridge (this is the one that is +12s/y room and -8s/y warm);

- the 'smooth-seconds' F230 is -5s/y in the fridge (but around 70s/y room and 30s/y warm) - average quartz results;

- the new 8F35 seems to keep the same -4.5s/y warm (and +5s/y room = very pleasant results :-!), next week I will also check even warmer (full contact with the router, I normally keep watches just in 'crown up' position but I am curious about the difference);

- a small surprise was the 5M62 Kinetzilla - based on the really impressive consistency of the rate (even when I was away for a week) I was expecting/hoping under 20 and maybe even under 10 s/y delta - it is however around 26s/y (124 s/y in my normal recharging pattern of around 12h/week of wear, around 98 s/y on the router - will also go even warmer next week ;-)).


----------



## ronalddheld

For the F230, just leave it in the warmer part of the refrigerator?


----------



## Catalin

ronalddheld said:


> For the F230, just leave it in the warmer part of the refrigerator?


Could have worked if it was not my most comfortable watch for hot/humid weather and right now it is exactly like that out here :-d


----------



## labslave28

After 10 days at 90F the rate of my 8F32 was 3.7+/-0.5 sec/yr by stopwatch method and 4.4+/-0.4 sec/yr by video method. The total rate for the last 30 days is 10.0/9.9 sec/yr stopwatch/video methods. I'm running a ten day test at 93F now.


----------



## Catalin

*Results from 2010-06-20 ...*

A new PDF with the latest numbers, including the two results from the previous week in the fridge, can be found at

http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20100620.pdf

The main change was a large increase in the daily temperatures in my area, and as such the room temperature does not get under 23C not even at night!!! The results however are very consistent with that - but with two exceptions - the latest E510/E410 pair gets somehow strange numbers - both get the slowest results ever (triple-checked, and checked again on the previous video for the E410) at a temperature somewhere in between temperatures where the previous results were always higher!!!

On the warm router will now go the 8F56, the twin quartz (where I only want to see some stability numbers since it might go for service this year) and one of the 'bellmaquartz' models.


----------



## webvan

*Re: Results from 2010-06-20 ...*

Yes, hard to test for room temperatures these days! I had to put my watches in the cellar the other day!

More data from the fridge where I left them for two weeks between 5 and 8 degrees celsius this is how my HEQs behaved (fridge/room/router) :

- Citizen E510 : -1/11/9
- Lacroix Miros : -11/2/17
- Longines VHP : -22/-5/6
- Seiko TQ 9256 : -305* /15/0 
- Seiko 8F56 (1999) : -25/55/15 (corrected)
- Seiko 8F56 (2000) : -80/15/-10

I've adjusted the Omega 1510 (2.4Mhz) a bit : (Room/Router)
Before : -80/2 (23/30dC)
After : -10/100 (23/35dC)
The variation is still high but within Omega's 0.025s/d/dC specs...

* vs 34 the last time, the battery seems to be dying as it is losing more time at room temp. Battery is a year old.


----------



## Catalin

*Data from 2010-07-04 ...*

Here is the data from 2010-07-04, quick overview:

- the latest 8F33 (SBQL001 from 2002) was added (bringing the total to 16 watches in timing tests) - unfortunately the 'poor man's grand seiko' seems about 60s/y fast - not as fast as the 8F33 from 2000 but close, it remains to be seen how the 'delta' is ...

- the weather in the last 2 weeks around here was a LOT less HOT than the other 2 weeks before, so some changes have been seen;

- the 3 watches placed on 'very warm' (like 32-35C) generated bigger deviations;

- pretty much everything else is in the expected range (for the temperature), maybe with the exception of the E510/E410 pair - on which I am keeping an eye ...

- on the warm router I have for the next 2 weeks the latest SBQL001 (8F33) together with the other older 8F33 (just to have an extra reference) and a Pulsar (NOT the HEQ PSR10/20, just a cheap model with all-lume dial that was the very first I dared to test in the fridge :-d ) that was never tested 'warm' ...


----------



## Eeeb

*Re: Data from 2010-07-04 ...*

I love these updates!


----------



## webvan

*Re: Update on 2010-05-03*



Catalin said:


> I find the Aerospace the most unexpected (towards the 'somehow wild' side)


Figured it out, the battery was dying on it as the EOL flashing display came on last week. Would have preferred it to come on earlier...

With a new battery it's back to specs, more or less : 
24 dC : -10 spy
36 dC : 16 spy


----------



## Codeman60

*Re: Update on 2010-05-03*



webvan said:


> Figured it out, the battery was dying on it as the EOL flashing display came on last week. Would have preferred it to come on earlier...
> 
> With a new battery it's back to specs, more or less :
> 24 dC : -10 spy
> 36 dC : 16 spy


What year is your Aerospace?

Although Breitling claims 15 s/yr for the 2010 models, mine is indicating just +0.240 s/yr after 11 weeks.


----------



## webvan

2007. Actually Breitling guarantee +/- 15spy, but the movement is specced by ETA at +/- 10 spy, it just so happens your wearing pattern catches it dead center, which is good, but if you put it through the same 12 degree Celsius variation you're likely to see a similar shift that would be 10x with a normal quartz and x2/x3 with a high frequency quartz.


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## Codeman60

I didn't know ETA's spec was 10. Thanks for the info!


----------



## Catalin

*Data from 2010-07-18 ...*

Latest data can be found at http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20100718.pdf - quick overview:

- the temperatures got slightly higher and continue to grow around here :think:

- SBQL001 did better on the warm router but not much better, I would say it is something like 60-65 s/y room and 50 s/y warm, this now goes to room temperature but it will be tough since it still is in the 'honeymoon period' and will most likely still get 6-7 hours or wrist time/week ;-) ; the other watches on the warm router (my other 8F33 and some ordinary ultra-low-cost quartz) performed pretty much as expected (the 'klingon' 8F33 is actually the 8F in my collection with the smallest delta so far - only like 10 s/y from room to warm);

- the only watches that continue their rather unexpected trend are the 3 solar Exceed models - two E510 and one E410 - those all will now go on the warm router for two weeks;

- I am still surprised how small the delta is for the non-HEQ 6M25 and also for the second (also non-HEQ) 7223, so those two and probably the 5E31 will go next on the warm router. (the 7223 might only have battery for a few months and after that might go for service together with another 7223 with problems and the 9923 twin quartz which most certainly needs some service after all that time).


----------



## Catalin

*Update for 2010-08-01*

The latest data is available at http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20100801.pdf :

- the 3 solar Exceed models indeed confirm that something was changed - I do not know the reason (only the titanium E510 was in the freezer so it's not that thermal shock), but the results at the rather stable temperatures of the warm router show that there WAS a change - the original E510 titanium has now provided the best (and lowest) results that I have on record for it with the video method, the same is true for the steel E510 (best and lowest results, and at this point with 5 s/y warm and 8 s/y room might become my potential overall champion) and also the E410 has provided it's lowest-ever results in my tests - but those are pretty inconsistent with the previous E410 results on the warm router :think: :think: :think: we'll see how things are during the next interval :think: :think: :think:

- on the other watches no surprises - there was some data missing on one of the Seiko 7223 models (the one with excellent times around room temperature but average delta), but that might be half-corrected and until the next results I hope to have time to check again the video values;

- on the warm router I have now the other 7223 (the one with very good delta), a Seiko multifunction 6M25 (which also suggests a VERY good delta in HEQ range) and the 5E31 (again - very good delta) - only the last one was supposed to have HEQ-range delta but only the very first one of those 3 can be adjusted, so we'll see about that ...


----------



## South Pender

*Re: Update for 2010-08-01*



Catalin said:


> The latest data is available at http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20100801.pdf :
> 
> - the 3 solar Exceed models indeed confirm that something was changed - I do not know the reason (only the titanium E510 was in the freezer so it's not that thermal shock), but the results at the rather stable temperatures of the warm router show that there WAS a change - the original E510 titanium has now provided the best (and lowest) results that I have on record for it with the video method, the same is true for the steel E510 (best and lowest results, and at this point with 5 s/y warm and 8 s/y room might become my potential overall champion) and also the E410 has provided it's lowest-ever results in my tests - but those are pretty inconsistent with the previous E410 results on the warm router :think: :think: :think: we'll see how things are during the next interval :think: :think: :think:
> 
> - on the other watches no surprises - there was some data missing on one of the Seiko 7223 models (the one with excellent times around room temperature but average delta), but that might be half-corrected and until the next results I hope to have time to check again the video values;
> 
> - on the warm router I have now the other 7223 (the one with very good delta), a Seiko multifunction 6M25 (which also suggests a VERY good delta in HEQ range) and the 5E31 (again - very good delta) - only the last one was supposed to have HEQ-range delta but only the very first one of those 3 can be adjusted, so we'll see about that ...


I assume your use of the term "delta" indexes a change of some kind, as that's the usual mathematical definition. Is it the change in _spy_ from that obtained on your router to that obtained at room temperature? And could you remind me about what the actual temperatures are in these two locations?


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Update for 2010-08-01*



South Pender said:


> I assume your use of the term "delta" indexes a change of some kind, as that's the usual mathematical definition. Is it the change in _spy_ from that obtained on your router to that obtained at room temperature? And could you remind me about what the actual temperatures are in these two locations?


Yes, that's pretty much it - and I am trying to estimate those based on the actual readings from a simple digital thermometer, but the weather still plays a small role and I can only give a range ... which is generally listed in the PDF and is normally showing excellent correlation to the actual result of the watch - but just like I said, for some reason that was somehow changed recently for the 3 solar Exceed models ...


----------



## Catalin

*New (late) update for 2010-08-22*

The latest data can be seen at:

http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20100822.pdf

- the weather was even hotter during the last 3 weeks, reaching most likely the peak for 2010;

- the 3 solar Exceed models continue to show that something was changed

- the good delta from the second 7223 was not quite confirmed (it was apparently VERY hot), the one from 6M25 was also less spectacular than I expected, only the 5E31 confirmed a good delta (and even that one scored the most extreme result for that watch in my records);

- on the warm router I have now 3 titanium watches :-d - my first 'Klingon' 8F33, my first EcoDrive and PC (7+ years old, non-HEQ caliber 0810) and the 'smooth-seconds washable' (non-HEQ caliber F230) - but I do not expect huge surprises.


----------



## webvan

*Re: New (late) update for 2010-08-22*

Thanks for the updates. Nothing really new on my end so I haven't been posting updates...until today ;-)

Good news for my Breitling Aerospace though, it's performance had been a become a bit odd...reason was a failing battery, even though the EOL blinking only came later. I put in a new battery and now it's ticking at about +7spy when worn infrequently.

The 8F32 SLL015 I just picked up looks promising at +6spy when worn, another good reason to go for a new crystal if I can find one, they are backordered at Ofrei but will stop by a repair shop tomorrow to see what they think. Seiko really need to put saphire crystals on all their watches, mineral is too easily scratched.

Picked up a 5S21 recently, it seems to be gaining about 1/2 spm, not great but wasn't expecting miracles, it's an HEQ because it's smooth, not because it's accurate ;-)


----------



## Catalin

*Update for 2010-09-12*

The updated data can be found at:

http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20100912c.pdf

(it was paged slightly different for a test).

One visible difference is that now I have 17 watches in the test - as you might have seen a Longines L546.2 (ETA 252.611) was added to my collection and after a small initial scare things look very well right now - an initial measurement was done last Sunday and this Sunday I have the very first timing results - not bad at all at around minus12 s/y at room temperature! (the battery was probably changed at Swatch service in HongKong around 2008, so the rate might have been last checked/set at that point, but we do not know).

The weather is now clearly colder and some of the results are showing it, but no major change - the E510 and E410 models still seem a little 'changed' from the start of this year, so for the next interval I will have on the warm router my two E510 models and the new Conquest VHP - for at least one week I will use my normal 'crown up' position (which results in temperatures closer to actually wearing the watch), I will make a quick reading next Sunday and for the rest of the interval I will also test 'dial up' (full contact on the back - which generates clearly hotter temperatures).


----------



## South Pender

*Re: Update for 2010-09-12*



Catalin said:


> The weather is now clearly colder and some of the results are showing it, but no major change - the E510 and E410 models still seem a little 'changed' from the start of this year, so for the next interval I will have on the warm router my two E510 models and the new Conquest VHP - for at least one week I will use my normal 'crown up' position (which results in temperatures closer to actually wearing the watch), I will make a quick reading next Sunday and for the rest of the interval I will also test 'dial up' (full contact on the back - which generates clearly hotter temperatures).


You've mentioned that the weather is now colder, and this is having an effect. One reason that my results seemed to change somewhat (for the better) in my tests of the two Seiko watches might have been the warming weather during the testing period. Still, this surprises me a little. When I wear watches, I'm inside most of the time, and the temperature is pretty constant from summer to winter. In addition, I wear long-sleeve shirts most of the year so that exposure to cooler ambient temperatures is minimized. When I'm outside on a warm summer day, I'll be wearing a short-sleeve polo shirt or some-such, so that no insulating from sleeves is taking place. When I look at it all, it doesn't seem that the temperature sensed by the watch should change much from one season to another--again when being worn. My skin temperature remains constant, and the ambient temperature doesn't change that much, so that I'd guess that the watch might be sensing something like, maybe 29°C in the winter most of the time and maybe 30.5°C in the summer.

For me, storage temperatures (from being placed in a drawer) don't vary much either from one season to another, since we keep our house at a pretty constant temperature all year around with a heat pump--probably 19°C to 23°C. And yet, there may be some effect on rate from even this narrow a temperature range.

In any case, I'm not questioning your assertions, just indicating surprise that small temperature changes seem to have much more effect that I would have thought.


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Update for 2010-09-12*



South Pender said:


> You've mentioned that the weather is now colder, and this is having an effect. One reason that my results seemed to change somewhat (for the better) in my tests of the two Seiko watches might have been the warming weather during the testing period. Still, this surprises me a little. When I wear watches, I'm inside most of the time, and the temperature is pretty constant from summer to winter. In addition, I wear long-sleeve shirts most of the year so that exposure to cooler ambient temperatures is minimized. When I'm outside on a warm summer day, I'll be wearing a short-sleeve polo shirt or some-such, so that no insulating from sleeves is taking place. When I look at it all, it doesn't seem that the temperature sensed by the watch should change much from one season to another--again when being worn. My skin temperature remains constant, and the ambient temperature doesn't change that much, so that I'd guess that the watch might be sensing something like, maybe 29°C in the winter most of the time and maybe 30.5°C in the summer.
> 
> For me, storage temperatures (from being placed in a drawer) don't vary much either from one season to another, since we keep our house at a pretty constant temperature all year around with a heat pump--probably 19°C to 23°C. And yet, there may be some effect on rate from even this narrow a temperature range.
> 
> In any case, I'm not questioning your assertions, just indicating surprise that small temperature changes seem to have much more effect that I would have thought.


I was myself expecting (OK, hoping ;-)) smaller variations with some of my watches and actually bigger with others, and I would have certainly thought that the 5 s/y 9F models would show MUCH smaller variations in your test, however:

- in my case I did not wear a single watch for almost an entire month since I got my 8F56 Travellzilla more than one year ago :-d

- the change in temperature around here was rather dramatic at some point - night temperatures in the air outside dropping from 25C to 14C in like 2-3 weeks (and it also happened to be very much confined to separate intervals in my tests);

- the 'delta' (room/worn) that got talked around a little by myself and _webvan_ can be quite relevant! (even if it is not over a large temperature difference - 6-8 C usually);

- I also believe there is a STRONG hysteresis effect sometimes at play, which most likely is not captured by the usual 'rate vs. temperature' graphs that we have seen!!!

- I am wearing my watches very 'loose' around my wrist; also please note that the physiologic / personal perception of temperature can vary dramatically on many, many parameters;

- the temperature can vary quite 'wildly' inside certain rooms in my house - I mean from one corner to another; that is very visible in my tests where you will see for a given time interval two sets of temperatures - the solar watches are kept near a window (which stays open if temperature is not too low or too high), while all the other watches are in a different corner where the temperatures are clearly more constant!

- for my watches the night temperatures (and the 'around window temperatures' for the solar models) seem to be the decisive factors;

- on the funny side my 'Kinetzilla' is one of the examples that have surprised me with rather very good rate stability over time - it clearly performs better (in non-synthetic tests) than almost any other normal quartz so at some point I have thought that a much flatter curve was somehow accidentally obtained for that watch, but actual controlled tests have shown that the variation is pretty much the same as normal 32kHz quartz - so in that case the actual explanation is the fact that I wear it very consistently - for about 3 times/week for about 4-5 hours each time in order to keep the rechargeable full ;-) That effect also might explain the very good and consistent results of SpringDrive models!


----------



## Catalin

*Re: New (late) update for 2010-08-22*



webvan said:


> Thanks for the updates. Nothing really new on my end so I haven't been posting updates...until today ;-)
> 
> Good news for my Breitling Aerospace though, it's performance had been a become a bit odd...reason was a failing battery, even though the EOL blinking only came later. I put in a new battery and now it's ticking at about +7spy when worn infrequently.
> 
> The 8F32 SLL015 I just picked up looks promising at +6spy when worn, another good reason to go for a new crystal if I can find one, they are backordered at Ofrei but will stop by a repair shop tomorrow to see what they think. Seiko really need to put saphire crystals on all their watches, mineral is too easily scratched.
> 
> Picked up a 5S21 recently, it seems to be gaining about 1/2 spm, not great but wasn't expecting miracles, it's an HEQ because it's smooth, not because it's accurate ;-)


Very interesting stuff (that somehow I managed to miss until today :think.

Was the delta changed on the Aerospace after replacing the battery ?

How old was the 8F32 ?

What do you think of the 5S21 ? I was tempted by a 5S42 but the only way I decided to get the recent Longines was to consider it my self-gift for the New Year and don't buy anything else until then :-d (I believe my ez430 was already ordered at that point so it does not count b-)).


----------



## South Pender

*Re: Update for 2010-09-12*



Catalin said:


> I was myself expecting (OK, hoping ;-)) smaller variations with some of my watches and actually bigger with others, and I would have certainly thought that the 5 s/y 9F models would show MUCH smaller variations in your test, however


Actually, I was expecting larger on-wrist to off-wrist variation! I'd seen that with my Citizen Chronomasters, where they were well within spec when worn, but well outside spec when stored (although "spec" doesn't apply to the off-the-wrist condition). I don't have any off-wrist data on SBGX075 yet so don't want to speak too soon about this, but I was pleasantly surprised by SBGT033s off-wrist performance (well within spec--requiring "approximately 12 hours a day" wear) even under non-spec conditions. This was a pleasant surprise; the variation from seasonal change was just a surprise!


----------



## webvan

*Re: New (late) update for 2010-08-22*

I think the most interesting data we could collect here is room/warm variations, that's really the best way to sort the good from the best TC watches and chuck the non-TC Quartz watches that happen to be spot on a specific temperature ;-) We'd talked about that with Catalin in a topic he'd started on how to best test watches I think, couldn't find it with a quick search ;-)



Catalin said:


> Very interesting stuff (that somehow I managed to miss until today :think. Was the delta changed on the Aerospace after replacing the battery ? How old was the 8F32 ? What do you think of the 5S21 ? I was tempted by a 5S42 but the only way I decided to get the recent Longines was to consider it my self-gift for the New Year and don't buy anything else until then :-d (I believe my ez430 was already ordered at that point so it does not count b-)).


You mean the warm/room delta on the Breitling ? Haven't tested it so far, but I didn't adjust the rate, there is a digital terminal but the way to adjust it is undocumented, unlike for the simple analog models.

The 8F32 is pretty old, 2000, not sure if any "pattern cutting" was done to it (I assume it can be done like on the 8F56 ?), will try asking the seller.

I love my 5S21 pocket watch ;-) Not familiar with the 5S42, will look it up. Noticed you mentioned the Longines, please post pictures of it in one of the Longines VHP topics ;-)


----------



## webvan

*Re: New (late) update for 2010-08-22*

Not sure you saw the previous message ? ;-)

5 days later, my 8F32 from 2000 is running at a stunning +4.48spy when worn 24 hours a day, will now test it at room temperature.

My 5S21 on the other hand has lost a whopping 40 seconds in 5 days...I did have it bouncing around in my pocket for a good 3 days though, I'll leave it still for a few days to see what happens.


----------



## Catalin

*Re: New (late) update for 2010-08-22*



webvan said:


> You mean the warm/room delta on the Breitling ? Haven't tested it so far, but I didn't adjust the rate, there is a digital terminal but the way to adjust it is undocumented, unlike for the simple analog models.
> 
> The 8F32 is pretty old, 2000, not sure if any "pattern cutting" was done to it (I assume it can be done like on the 8F56 ?), will try asking the seller.
> 
> I love my 5S21 pocket watch ;-) Not familiar with the 5S42, will look it up. Noticed you mentioned the Longines, please post pictures of it in one of the Longines VHP topics ;-)
> 
> ...
> 
> 5 days later, my 8F32 from 2000 is running at a stunning +4.48spy when worn 24 hours a day, will now test it at room temperature.
> 
> My 5S21 on the other hand has lost a whopping 40 seconds in 5 days...I did have it bouncing around in my pocket for a good 3 days though, I'll leave it still for a few days to see what happens.


If the Breitling was showing unusual times with a low battery it is not impossible that also the delta (which was measured then in those conditions) might have been affected a little.

The results from the 8F32 are really impressive and again (together with the 8F results from Mechanikus) suggest that aging is not the same for all 8F crystals ! I am increasingly curious on the delta on that one - my best 8F delta comes from my oldest one and worst absolute performer - the 'klingon 8F33' which only has like 8-10s/y delta (but 64-74s/y rate)- compared with 16-20 s/y for most of my other 8F calibers ...

On the 5S21 I wonder if it is not a problem from 'micro shocks' - you should probably test it for a full week in a 'resting position' ...

This Sunday I will have the first info on the delta on the Longines and post a few more words about it.


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Update for 2010-09-12*



Catalin said:


> ...
> One visible difference is that now I have 17 watches in the test - as you might have seen a Longines L546.2 (ETA 252.611) was added to my collection and after a small initial scare things look very well right now - an initial measurement was done last Sunday and this Sunday I have the very first timing results - not bad at all at around minus12 s/y at room temperature! (the battery was probably changed at Swatch service in HongKong around 2008, so the rate might have been last checked/set at that point, but we do not know).
> 
> The weather is now clearly colder and some of the results are showing it, but no major change - the E510 and E410 models still seem a little 'changed' from the start of this year, so for the next interval I will have on the warm router my two E510 models and the new Conquest VHP - for at least one week I will use my normal 'crown up' position (which results in temperatures closer to actually wearing the watch), I will make a quick reading next Sunday and for the rest of the interval I will also test 'dial up' (full contact on the back - which generates clearly hotter temperatures).


Well, the measurements after 1-week on the warm router are in - and the Longines VHP Perpetual is better than minus 6 s/y - however the delta shown by this one is more than twice bigger than the delta from the two E510 calibers that have also been in the same warm test. All 3 watches will stay in the 'warm test' but that might get a little warmer since all 3 will stay 'face up' and that provides for more contact on the back with the warm source ...


----------



## webvan

*Re: Update for 2010-09-12*

So what's the dela on the VHP (I take it you mean the warm/room delta?) ? What model is it? (


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Update for 2010-09-12*



webvan said:


> So what's the dela on the VHP (I take it you mean the warm/room delta?) ? What model is it? (


It is the Conquest VHP Perpetual - around -12 s/y room and -6 s/y warm, a delta of about 6s/y, more than twice better than the 8F models but again - not as good as the E510 models which seem to be well under 3s/y in the very same test.


----------



## Catalin

*Update for 2010-10-03*

Latest data at

http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20101003.pdf

Nothing very unusual, maybe just a little on the two E510 and the 252.611 which were on the warm router but apparently could not get as warm as I wanted :think:

Next 4 weeks (until the DST change, which will be a long day o| ) I'll have on the warm router the E410 with the pair E510 and the SBQJ015.


----------



## South Pender

*Re: Update for 2010-10-03*



Catalin said:


> Latest data at
> 
> http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20101003.pdf
> 
> Nothing very unusual, maybe just a little on the two E510 and the 252.611 which were on the warm router but apparently could not get as warm as I wanted :think:
> 
> Next 4 weeks (until the DST change, which will be a long day o| ) I'll have on the warm router the E410 with the pair E510 and the SBQJ015.


There are some phenomenal results in that dataset--the 8F56, 8F35, and Bellmaquartz. I think I'm reading your results correctly and am focusing on the accumulated drift over the 275 days, which you then prorate to 365 days. One question: Since you have been conducting tests at two temperature levels (room temp. and 'router'), are the accumulated results based on a mixture of these temperature conditions? If so, what proportion of the time have they been at, say, room temperature? Also (and you may have noted this earlier and I missed it), what temperature condition do you believe the router option represents? Is it roughly equivalent to an 'on-the-wrist' condition?


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Update for 2010-10-03*



South Pender said:


> There are some phenomenal results in that dataset--the 8F56, 8F35, and Bellmaquartz. I think I'm reading your results correctly and am focusing on the accumulated drift over the 275 days, which you then prorate to 365 days. One question: Since you have been conducting tests at two temperature levels (room temp. and 'router'), are the accumulated results based on a mixture of these temperature conditions? If so, what proportion of the time have they been at, say, room temperature? Also (and you may have noted this earlier and I missed it), what temperature condition do you believe the router option represents? Is it roughly equivalent to an 'on-the-wrist' condition?


You are perfectly correct - the results are accumulated and indeed a 'mixture' - on one column I also have an estimate of the average temperature for each watch and each period of time (not that hard as it might seem - I only have like 3-4 places where I keep the watches from that tests - but probably not always 100% accurate).

The *standard deviation* also tells a good story on how temperature-sensitive each one was over the entire test - however some watches (like the twin quartz) have been adjusted and the current value is degrees of magnitude better!

IMHO the most interesting results are from 3 of the non-HEQ models in the test:

- just as you noted, the first 7223 was calibrated by my watchmaker to a very, very good position for the wearing-pattern that I have for that one; the 'delta' (room/warm) at around 50-60 s/y is pretty big compared to the HEQ modls, but very good compared to other non-HEQ (with just one exception); that 7223 IMHO explains best why we sometimes see reports of incredibly good *overall timing* from non-HEQ models!

- the 5M62 kinetic is also pretty amazing in *stability* - if I discard the intervals on the warm router the standard deviation is in the order of 1-2 s/y - in my collection I can only get certainly-better results (while actually wearing the watch with a somehow random pattern) just from the Exceeds and now maybe the Longines; IMHO that highlights very well the 'stabilizing' effect of having to wear a watch at least 3 times/week - which explains the very, very good results seen by most SpringDrive owners;

- another unusual one is the 6M25 - that is the non-HEQ model in my tests which has the best delta (something in the range of 30 s/y) and again as expected from that (without the warm intervals) is showing very small standard deviations - probably that one is a good example of pure luck in a standard quartz crystal - but since that one can not be calibrated I can't really get it to anything better than that :-(


----------



## Catalin

*Update for 2010-10-31 (on DST change)*

Today I finally managed to process the video files from Sunday but better late than never ;-)

Anyway it was a double amount of work - since that Sunday was also the day for EU change of DST - meaning that for most watches I had to make a measurement to 'close' the previous interval and then change back the hour and make another measurement to start a new interval. (which also goes to prove once again that having the measurements done on Sunday is also the best choice for multiple long-term measurements on a lot of watches).

You can obviously imagine that on such occasions I am really happy with watches that have a feature for timezone/DST correction without disturbing the seconds-hand - meaning my 8F56, my E510/E410 and my now my ETA 252.611 - but this one time I also 'double-checked' that - not so much for 8F56 or ETA 252.611 (where the DST correction is done 'mechanically' without even interacting with the quartz part) but instead on the E510/E410 calibers - where the correction is made electronically and in theory if not properly implemented it might induce a very small change - and I am happy to report that as far as I could test (which means about 16ms) there seems to be no delay in the Citizen implementation b-)

The latest numbers are available at::

http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20101031.pdf

Nothing unusual in the data - maybe only exception on the E410, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Until the next DST change I also decided to test something else - and I have placed 'on hold' my 'smooth seconds' quartz - that one is still apparently on the original battery long, long after the normal date expected for the battery change - which for me was proof that the watch was delivered by Citizen to the watch shop in special 'storage mode' with the crown out - we'll see if that still works :think:

By accident I also missed the second set of videos for my Yellow Kinetzilla but on that one and most of the non-high-accuracy models the tests were already clear enough - so I have not yet decided if those will be still kept in tests - maybe just for a 6-months interval. Even the high-accuracy models will only see updates at around 4 weeks at best - and that will primarily be to keep an eye on the aging involved!


----------



## South Pender

*Re: Update for 2010-10-31 (on DST change)*

Really interesting data update, as always. I took a hard look at one set of your results, that for SBQJ015. The overall _spy_ value you have reported, after 303 days, is really phenomenal at 2.039 _spy_. And this is very informative. However, there is a great deal of rate fluctuation throughout your findings, and I'm wondering whether you could, say, calculate a mean _spy_ for, say, (a) the 8 'warm' intervals, having temperature ranges of 29-31C, 27-31C, or 32-35C, with these representing a reasonable approximation to the 'wearing' condition, and (b) the 8 "room temp.' intervals, having temperature ranges of 22-23C, 22-24C, and 22-26C. This would give us some idea of the watch's performance at these two key temperature points. Of course, taking the mean drift values is not quite the same thing as getting a value based on continuous exposure to these temperature ranges, but it might tell us something of value.

Another feature of the values you have recorded for SBQJ015 is the considerable interval-to-interval fluctuation, even when these intervals are at approximately the same temperatures. Consider, for example, the last four intervals in your display. Here, we have the watch exposed to 22C to 26C, not a great range really, but we get rate drift estimates of .841 sec. for the 21-day interval between 9/12/10 to 10/3/10, but of only .234 sec. for the 14-day interval between 10/17/10 and 10/21/10. Even if we prorate the latter to 21 days, by which it rises to .351 sec., the difference in drift values between the two intervals at roughly the same temperature is a little surprising. I guess I say "surprising" because it has been asserted on this forum that the _only thing_ that causes rate changes is temperature change. Given your results, do you believe this?


----------



## Catalin

*Very late update for 2010-11-28*

I did capture the videos during the previous Sunday, but only this weekend I managed to remember about them and have some free time at the same time :-d

The latest PDF is at:

http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20101128b.pdf

There are two unusual things in the new file - and unfortunately none of those is related to a watch :think: - the first is related to my top formulas, where I was only using the first 25-30 rows of data; only one watch was seriously over that number - the King Quartz - but it was strange how I was adding rows and the top values were not changing at all - now that is fixed until I reach around 300 rows of data :-d The other change is also in numbers - the 5E31 did have a very strange value for the very first interval which was unlike anything else for that watch and was starting to bug me - I have previously looked at the video for the *end* of the first interval without finding anything but now I recovered the the very first video (the one where I was establishing a baseline) from a backup and took another look - and indeed I was 1-second off - which just shows again how important the alignment of the seconds-hand can be sometimes :-d Surprisingly after that change the 5E31 is now one of the most consistent watches in the test - in numbers is actually the most consistent, but unlike the two E510 models (which actually are my most thermally-stable models), the 5E31 only had like less than half of the 'warm' intervals (of the E510 models).

I also wanted to add a new non-HEQ to the list for 1-2 weeks just to have some idea where it stands - the Astrodea - but unfortunately while I did took a baseline with that one I must repeat that later today since during the previous week some of my friends were crazy about playing with it ;-)

The E410 was the only one showing slightly less usual results but nothing that could not be related to the change in temperature.

Currently on the warm router I will have the SBCM023 and the VHP Perpetual - plus sometimes the new Texas Instruments 'toy' - which will be used to actually have a better idea on the actual temperatures involved using the data-logger firmware - so far it seems that with the normal 'crown up' position the warming effect is currently small (there was a major network change about 6-8 months ago, and the router is now no longer so hot), and the only way to constantly raise the temperatures is to use face up or face down positions. At some point in January I will start my other tests with that one - meaning the tests to try to see if I can really make a 'do it yourself HEQ' :-d


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Update for 2010-10-31 (on DST change)*



South Pender said:


> Really interesting data update, as always. I took a hard look at one set of your results, that for SBQJ015. The overall _spy_ value you have reported, after 303 days, is really phenomenal at 2.039 _spy_. And this is very informative. However, there is a great deal of rate fluctuation throughout your findings, and I'm wondering whether you could, say, calculate a mean _spy_ for, say, (a) the 8 'warm' intervals, having temperature ranges of 29-31C, 27-31C, or 32-35C, with these representing a reasonable approximation to the 'wearing' condition, and (b) the 8 "room temp.' intervals, having temperature ranges of 22-23C, 22-24C, and 22-26C. This would give us some idea of the watch's performance at these two key temperature points. Of course, taking the mean drift values is not quite the same thing as getting a value based on continuous exposure to these temperature ranges, but it might tell us something of value.


I will try to something like that maybe at some point in January!



South Pender said:


> Another feature of the values you have recorded for SBQJ015 is the considerable interval-to-interval fluctuation, even when these intervals are at approximately the same temperatures. Consider, for example, the last four intervals in your display. Here, we have the watch exposed to 22C to 26C, not a great range really, but we get rate drift estimates of .841 sec. for the 21-day interval between 9/12/10 to 10/3/10, but of only .234 sec. for the 14-day interval between 10/17/10 and 10/21/10. Even if we prorate the latter to 21 days, by which it rises to .351 sec., the difference in drift values between the two intervals at roughly the same temperature is a little surprising. I guess I say "surprising" because it has been asserted on this forum that the _only thing_ that causes rate changes is temperature change. Given your results, do you believe this?


The temperature interval that is listed is not some 'average' where you can consider the middle of the interval, it was just a RANGE of readings with the actual average possibly being ANYWHERE in the interval (maybe even a little outside, but that is a little more unlikely). Given that, if you now look again at those specific 4 and consider the first two intervals ('room') you see around 14.7 s/y possibly with an average very close to 22 C and then for the other two ('warm' - I use the color of that cell to remember it was on the warm router) you get something around 6.7 s/y possibly with a temperature average very close to 26 C - nothing really unusual for a caliber that has a delta room/warm in the range of 8-16 s/y or more! (as most 8F models seem to have).


----------



## webvan

*Re: Very late update for 2010-11-28*



Catalin said:


> plus sometimes the new Texas Instruments 'toy'


I recently picked up the $10 HidTEMPer USB thermometer for that purpose (and to monitor the temp at my place when I'm away !) and use it in conjunction with the ThermoHID software : ThermoHID


----------



## Catalin

*Last update for 2010 ...*

The latest data can be found at:

http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20101226.pdf

The interesting new change is that for 2 watches (SBCM023 and the COnquest VHP Perpetual) I now have one interval with a rather 'controlled' actual temperature :-! (which fits reasonably well with my estimates on other intervals in the past where I used a similar position for watches on the warm router - but that was during summer).

Currently on the warm router are my first two HEQ models - the titanium E510 and the titanium 8F56 (together with the ezChronos to record the actual temperature - see my post from https://www.watchuseek.com/f9/some-quick-temperature-info-487177.html ).

In about two weeks I will try to have a longer post on this entire 2010 project :-d


----------



## South Pender

*Re: Last update for 2010 ...*



Catalin said:


> The latest data can be found at:
> 
> http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20101226.pdf
> 
> The interesting new change is that for 2 watches (SBCM023 and the COnquest VHP Perpetual) I now have one interval with a rather 'controlled' actual temperature :-! (which fits reasonably well with my estimates on other intervals in the past where I used a similar position for watches on the warm router - but that was during summer).
> 
> Currently on the warm router are my first two HEQ models - the titanium E510 and the titanium 8F56 (together with the ezChronos to record the actual temperature - see my post from https://www.watchuseek.com/f9/some-quick-temperature-info-487177.html ).
> 
> In about two weeks I will try to have a longer post on this entire 2010 project :-d


As always, very interesting data, Catalin. There's an interesting contrast between your first two watches, SBQJ015 and EBJ74-1742. The first of these is quite thermo-sensitive, and this seems to follow a pretty lawful pattern, with the watch running too fast at room temperature and too slow at wearing temperatures and beyond. The "sweet spot" with this watch would seem to be around about 26-27C--which, in the minds of the Seiko engineers, might be seen as a good compromise (for a non-TC watch) between storage and wearing conditions. The results reported today (12/31) by h2oflyer with his 8F35-powered watch are similar, but more extreme. Both your results and h2oflyer's, however, seem to follow dwjquest's graphs reasonably closely.

https://www.watchuseek.com/f9/tempe...movements-366862-post2741458.html#post2741458

EBJ74-1742, on the other hand, shows far greater consistency, although, over the whole temperature range, lesser accuracy. Thermo-insensitivity is apparent (as we'd expect in a TC movement), but the movement appears to have been poorly calibrated.


----------



## Catalin

*New data available (finally)*

Finally some new data is available at:

http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20111030.pdf

The management is becoming a little 'fuzzy' - since some watches had battery changes and similar stuff, other watches were simply removed from the 'more often tests' ...

Nothing very unexpected - aging is clearly taking place on most/all of them - I would say that (obviously) we see the biggest aging into 8F calibers (but even among those there are clear differences), but we also see clear aging in many 32 kHz models - and apparently (and most unpleasant for me) also in E510/E410 calibers (which however still remain the best in TC results from this set).

I will repeat some of the tests at different temperatures (most urgent with E410/E510) and probably after the next DST I'll have some extra data.


----------



## webvan

*Re: New data available (finally)*

Thanks for the update, wonder what happened to the SBQJ015 this summer! Why did you set your 8F35 at -9 seconds ? Planning to store it in your fridge ? ;-)


----------



## South Pender

*Re: New data available (finally)*



Catalin said:


> Finally some new data is available at:
> 
> http://caranfil.org/timing/timing_data_20111030.pdf
> 
> The management is becoming a little 'fuzzy' - since some watches had battery changes and similar stuff, other watches were simply removed from the 'more often tests' ...
> 
> Nothing very unexpected - aging is clearly taking place on most/all of them - I would say that (obviously) we see the biggest aging into 8F calibers (but even among those there are clear differences), but we also see clear aging in many 32 kHz models - and apparently (and most unpleasant for me) also in E510/E410 calibers (which however still remain the best in TC results from this set).
> 
> I will repeat some of the tests at different temperatures (most urgent with E410/E510) and probably after the next DST I'll have some extra data.


Perhaps I'm not fully understanding your results, but the E410 and at least one E510 appear to have delivered fabulous accuracy--under 2 s/y over almost two years. I've focused on the big number at the top of the column s/y as indicating the full result over the longest time period. Perhaps I'm missing something, but for those two watches, it's hard to see any negative effects, crystal-aging or otherwise.


----------



## Catalin

*Re: New data available (finally)*



webvan said:


> Thanks for the update, wonder what happened to the SBQJ015 this summer! Why did you set your 8F35 at -9 seconds ? Planning to store it in your fridge ? ;-)


There is one thing you need to know about SBQJ015 - it was set ONLY ONCE since I got it - and I plan on keeping a very long CONTINUOUS run (currently a few months shy of 3 years) with it :-d. So I kept it in a pretty warm place - knowing that it will go well on the 'negative side' - but that will just be a sort of 'reserve' for later years when aging and more 'normal' temperatures would get it back on positive gains. I am also trying to see if there is any difference in aging if the watch is 'aged' while being kept on a negative rate.

On the 8F35 it was just a reflex - I tend to set most of my watches that go for only 6 months intervals somewhere in between -10s or -20s - obviously on the 8F35 that was not needed, but it was a VERY hectic Sunday evening and I only realized the mistake 2 days later when I finally processed the videos and filled the Excel database :roll:


----------



## Catalin

*Re: New data available (finally)*



South Pender said:


> Perhaps I'm not fully understanding your results, but the E410 and at least one E510 appear to have delivered fabulous accuracy--under 2 s/y over almost two years. I've focused on the big number at the top of the column s/y as indicating the full result over the longest time period. Perhaps I'm missing something, but for those two watches, it's hard to see any negative effects, crystal-aging or otherwise.


The numbers on my first E510 (the titanium one) are a little misleading - the watch is pretty solid around +20 s/y - however at some point I did a special 1-week test in a very thermally-insulated place (together with a few other watches including the ezChronos in data-logging - the interval is marked *21.9 +/- 0.4* degrees C - and 12 months later I will repeat that to have a more precise estimate on the aging). *However* on the E510 the problem seems to be that the watch entered "power-save 2" - and it seems that in that state the TC part is not working !!!??? Anyway it resulted in an abysmal result for that week - which however kept the total very low.

On the second E510 and E410 pair the things are a little different - I was trying to see (just like with the 8F56) if aging is different when kept pretty warm - on the E510 things don't look very different (that one had an interesting correction anyway, and in the first year better numbers were seen around room temperature), however on the E410 it seems that aging has switched the sign of the error from initially negative to currently positive - I have already moved it for the next interval to 'room temperature' and I will probably do the same with the E510 at some point in the next weeks/months.


----------



## ronalddheld

*Re: New data available (finally)*

Do we have any evidence of other watches disabling the TC functions when the power is low?


----------



## Catalin

*Over the 2-year mark*

I am basically a little over my 2nd consecutive year of high-precision measurements, and at this point I am going to extract some conclusions and switch to a lower gear - meaning fewer measurements at longer intervals 

The main goal of my 2010 "high-precision measurements" projects was achieved, and I now know reasonably well the accuracy of my HEQ/HAQ models (and a few extra). The second part of that goal involved also getting more information on the performance of the thermo-compensation mechanism in my watches - and that was also achieved "in style" 

As a bonus some interesting AGING information was also acquired, but that is still 'evolving' and subject of further information gathering.

From the *"overall accuracy"* viewpoint the indisputable champion was caliber E410 in the ladies Citizen Exceed - this is one of the 3 watches that have now been set about 2 years ago (or more than that) and never had/needed the seconds adjusted  In 2 years this one had less than -2 seconds of error, for an average under -1 second/year 

The first other notable mention seems to be my titanium 8F56 (which I nicknamed Travelzilla) - it was set about 3 years ago and is currently around -14 seconds, for an average under -5 seconds/year - HOWEVER this one was ONLY achieved with a certain degree of "indirect manipulation" = storing the watch in a rather warm environment 

The second mention goes to the Longines VHP Perpetual - better than 10 seconds/year with some good hopes depending on how long the battery will last (the 8F56 will also be limited like that, but on that one I should still have 6+ years, while on the Longines the information is not very clear and it could be anywhere from one year to six).

On the *"thermo-compensation performance"* things are slightly different - the E510 calibers are the leaders in the range of 5 s/y difference warm/room (and E410 very close to that), with a second-place group in the range of 10 s/y difference warm/room represented by the VHP Perpetual and one of the Seiko vintage models, and a 3rd place group where the 8F calibers and the rest of the vintage HEQ seem to achieve in the range of 20-30 s/y difference warm/room.

The notable mentions here are the two vintage models - the old King Quartz (caliber 9923 twinquartz) was re-adjusted by me and is now again "reasonably HEQ" (about +20 s/y accuracy and also close to 20 s/y difference warm/room, which I could improve but I am now more interested in aging tests on that one), and the most surprising one - an old Seiko Spirit 5E31 which seems to be well in the 10 s/y difference warm/room category and probably the equal (in this regard) of the VHP Perpetual.

Finally the *"aging performance"* part - here the results are the most imprecise, and more information should be gathered over quite a few more years, but it seems that basically almost all of my watches are still changing/aging 

The best results here seem to be from very old models - where most of the quartz aging is stabilized - IMHO both the 9923 King Quartz and the 5E31 Spirit are now clear leaders here - "changing" (or "aging") in the range of under 2 s/y/y. The next level of "aging stability" seems to be around 5-8 s/y/y - with most of the 32 kHz HEQ models here, while the 8F calibers get the 3rd prize with a range around 10-16 s/y/y (which is still better than most non-HEQ models).

A notable mention here might go to my 8F56 Travelzilla (SBQJ015) - so far it seems to show less aging than any of the other 8F watches (including models close to 10 years older - which should have been a lot more stable by now), and also pretty close to the aging shown by the other recent 32 kHz TC HEQ models! However that might be random luck or might be something that will suddenly change in 2-4 years.

Another observation is that ALL my watches where I can tell (over 10 where I can tell certainly and another 10+ where I can tell with good probability), seem to age with a positive value - with the unusual exception of the ezChronos, which is aging with a negative value.

The bottom line is that on "under 5-10 years" level the leaders are the modern HEQ models, while on the very long term the performance is dominated by the amount of aging - so a special mention here should go to the VHP Perpetual, which should also be adjustable, and of course to more advanced HAQ prototypes like the HAQ-ezChronos (not represented in this tests, but is now in the range of 2 s/y and that is mostly dominated by aging uncertainty) - where things can always be adjusted but we also already have some aging-compensation 

Oh, and I almost forgot - here is the PDF with the results :-d


----------



## webvan

*Re: Over the 2-year mark*



Catalin said:


> The best results here seem to be from very old models - where most of the quartz aging is stabilized - IMHO both the 9923 King Quartz and the 5E31 Spirit are now clear leaders here - "changing" (or "aging") in the range of under 2 s/y/y. The next level of "aging stability" seems to be around 5-8 s/y/y - with most of the 32 kHz HEQ models here, while the 8F calibers get the 3rd prize with a range around 10-16 s/y/y (which is still better than most non-HEQ models).


Wow that's really a lot for the 8Fxx movements, especially since the max adjustment is a one-time -23spy. It's easy to understand why Seiko stopped making them, original customers would have to be pretty annoyed with their 10 year old watch gaining almost 15 seconds per month instead of the rated 20 seconds...My observations with 5 or 6 8F32s and 8F56s seemed to point to a 8 s/y/y drift, which was already pretty bad. I'm afraid your SBQJ015 will not "resist" much longer...


----------



## Catalin

*Re: Over the 2-year mark*



webvan said:


> Wow that's really a lot for the 8Fxx movements, especially since the max adjustment is a one-time -23spy. It's easy to understand why Seiko stopped making them, original customers would have to be pretty annoyed with their 10 year old watch gaining almost 15 seconds per month instead of the rated 20 seconds...My observations with 5 or 6 8F32s and 8F56s seemed to point to a 8 s/y/y drift, which was already pretty bad. I'm afraid your SBQJ015 will not "resist" much longer...


My range around 10 was mostly to 'separate' them - since the thermal effect is large it is hard to say with 100% certitude that it is 10 s/y/y instead of 5 or 15.

That being said my curiosity is now indeed pretty large on how the aging (of both 8F calibers and 32 kHz calibers) changes after some time - on 32 kHz things seem to 'settle' a little after 10+ years (based on what I measure now, but without any info about what value of aging the crystal initially had) but things are much stranger on the 192 kHz :roll:


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