Omega Makes The Very Cool Speedmaster Pilot A Reality; Breitling Releases Caribbean Duo; Marloe Updates Their Very Well Equipped Morar 310 Dive Watch; And An Incredible Blancpain Chinese Calendar

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I had to cut today’s edition a bit short because things were getting really expensive. It would have pushed the average price in the newsletter to over $60,000, which is just ridiculous. So, enjoy this already expensive edition with just four watches.

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In this issue:

• Omega Makes The Very Cool Speedmaster Pilot A Reality For The Rest Of Us

• Breitling Releases Super Chronomat B01 44 And Chronomat Automatic 36 Just For The Caribbean

• Marloe Updates Their Very Well Equipped Morar 310 Dive Watch With Even More Features

• Blancpain Unveil Their 2025 “Year of the Snake” Watch, The Villeret Traditional Chinese Calendar

👂What’s new

1/

Omega Makes The Very Cool Speedmaster Pilot A Reality For The Rest Of Us

OK, back in August, a couple of watch forum users put up slightly grainy photos of a very special Omega. It appeared to be a heavily modified Speedmaster Racing, created special for the United States Naval Test Pilot School, which provides instruction to experienced United States Navy, Marine Corps, Army, Air Force, and foreign military experimental test pilots. I wrote about it then and it was assumed that this was a watch made only for instructors of the UNSNTPS. Then, a few weeks later, we saw an even better photo of the watch — flying high at 67,976 feet, strapped to the wrist of a pilot in a United States Lockheed U-2 "Dragon Lady" spy plane. It is a disgustingly cool watch and there was no way we could get one without becoming a spy plane pilot, an elite instructor or buying one on the secondary market for outrageous sums. Well, it’s December and Christmas is around the corner, and it seems that Omega is in a giving mood — this is the new Omega Speedmaster Pilot, giving you the same look as the UNSNTPS, but with much more wearable proportions. Just don’t call it the new Flightmaster.

While the UNSNTPS was a modified Speedmaster Racing with a 44.25mm diameter, this version comes in way smaller. It measures 40.85mm wide, 14.54mm thick and with a 49.6mm lug-to-lug measurement. Those are very interesting dimensions — the regular Speedy Pro is wider at 42mm, thinner at 13.2mm and with a shorter L2L of 47.5mm. And that makes sense, because this watch has way more in common with the Speedmaster ‘57 case. The thickness comes from the box-style sapphire on top, while out back you’ll find a solid steel case back with the Omega hippocampus. The crystal is surrounded by a black bezel insert that has a Tachymetre scale (with orange writing on the Tacymetre) and a reference to older Speedy models with the dot-over-90. Water resistance is bumped up to 100 meters, so that’s welcomed as well.

The dial is super cool. It has a heavily grained matte-black surface that’s contrasted with a white minute scale. The watch has a bi-compax setup, with a combined 60-minute and 12-hour counter designed to look like a burn rate indicator at 3 o’clock and a small seconds display at 9 that looks like the artificial horizon indicator. There’s a ton of colors used here. The hand on the 3 o’clock sub-dial is bright orange, while the small seconds hand is yellow, with a blue painted sky on the artificial horizon. At 6 o’clock is a date aperture with a black date disc inside. But best of all, is the major fix to a Speedy problem — lume. There’s no lack of it here. The hour markers are made of lume blocks and shine extremely bright, with a slight green tint to them in daylight. The hands are also fully lumed in the upper ¾ of the hands, while the central chronograph hand is black with an orange tip.

Inside is the automatic Co-Axial Master Chronometer Caliber 9900 which is METAS approved. It beats at 4Hz and has a 60 hour power reserve. The watch comes on a fully brushed, flat-link bracelet with Omega’s on-the-fly micro-adjustment system in the clasp. It also comes with a Kevlar-reinforced grey NATO strap with a steel buckle.

The Omega Speedmaster Pilot is available now and it’s not a limited edition. However, it is a boutique exclusive. Price is set at $9,500. See more on the Omega website.

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Breitling Releases Super Chronomat B01 44 And Chronomat Automatic 36 Just For The Carribean

Interestingly, one of the cooler releases this year has been the Doxa SUB 200 that was an exclusive for the tiny Dutch island of St Maarten in the Caribbean. It featured a cool white bezel and a really nice shade of light blue on the dial. Well, it seems that the Caribbean has more watches to inspire than just the Doxa. Breitling has released two models inspired by the bright blue waters — the Super Chronomat B01 44 and Chronomat Automatic 36 Caribbean Editions. These Caribbean Editions are available exclusively at Breitling boutiques across the region, including locations in Aruba, Barbados, Cancun, Grand Cayman, Nassau, and St. Thomas, as well as select authorized retailers on cruise ships.

Let’s start with the big one, the Super Chronomat B01 44. It’s a chunky watch, measuring 44mm wide and 14.4mm thick. On top is a matte black ceramic bracelet with carved graduations for 60 minutes and numerals on the quarter positions. The caseback features a printed map of the Caribbean. The dial is rendered in a brilliant blue, with three black snailed chronograph subdials. Inside is the Breitling Manufacture Caliber 01, a COSC-certified chronometer with a 70 hour power reserve. The watch comes on a black rubber Rouleaux strap and a stainless steel folding clasp. The watch is limited to 150 pieces and price is set at $9,950. You can see the watch here.

The Chronomat Automatic 36 Caribbean Edition is the polar opposite of the huge B01. It comes in stainless steel and measures 36mm wide, 10.01mm thick and with a lug-to-lug of 43.4mm. You get a brushed and polished bezel on top, as well as 100 meters of water resistance. The dial gets the same light blue color, with silver applied and faceted hour indexes and hands. Inside is the COSC-certified automatic Breitling 10 calibre with 42 hours of power reserve. The watch comes on a stainless steel Rouleaux bracelet and it’s pretty great looking. Limited to 100 pieces, the watch is priced at €5,400. See more on the Breitling website.

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Marloe Updates Their Very Well Equipped Morar 310 Dive Watch With Even More Features

I don’t get to write about Marloe watches often enough, which is just a shame. They are best known for their rather minimalist watches with well thought out details — great hands, good color choices and interesting shapes. But there’s one watch that stands out from their offering — the Morar. This is a chunky diver that uses some unexpected design and technical choices. And I like them.

First, the basics. The Morar 310 is packed with a lot of interesting features. It measures 42mm wide and 12mm thick. Interestingly, it has a fully polished finish, with an extremely chunky bezel on top with sapphire inserts that come in four colorways. Inside, the watch has a soft iron cage for full anti-magnetic protection and, most interestingly — there’s a helium escape valve at 12 o’clock. On the side are very cool, very large and, best of all, detachable (!) crown guards. The lugs are also very unique, looking almost soldered on, but curving down at a 90 degree angle. Water resistance is 310 meters.

All of the dials have the same setup, with a black base and a colored minute ring on the periphery. The hands are chunky and partially skeletonized, with arrow-shaped lume plots inside. The hour markers are square on three models and circular and drop shaped on one, all fully lumed. At 12 o’clock is the brand name and at 6 is a colored circle with the number 310. The four colors are Air - Gold King, with a bright yellow countdown bezel, an all black dial, with a yellow and red seconds hand; Air - Steel is black with red accents; Land - Onyx is black and white, with just a hint of red in the 310 icon; and the Sea - Tropic is black with pretty great looking sea green details.

Inside is the Miyota 9039 which beats at 4Hz and has a 42 hour power reserve. The watches come on rubber straps that match the overall color combinations of the respective models.

The watches are available for pre-order right now with shipping expected in January or February. If you order the watch before January 1st, you can get it for £599, which seams like a great deal for all the tech it packs. In 2025, the price goes up to £699, which is still not bad. See more on the Marloe website.

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Blancpain Unveil Their 2025 “Year of the Snake” Watch, The Villeret Traditional Chinese Calendar

As we’re getting to the end of the year, brands will start releasing their watches that pay homage to the Chinese New Year. It’s become a serious tradition, with each brand releasing a watch that incorporates an animal that will mark the upcoming year in the Chinese calendar. For 2025, we are entering the Year of the Snake, and Blancpain is one of the first to release their watch, the incredible Villeret Traditional Chinese Calendar 2025 with a super complicated calendar that melds elements from Chinese and Gregorian calendars, a platinum case and a stunning green Grand Feu enamel dial.

The watch comes in a polished 45.2mm wide and 15.1mm thick platinum case. It’s a simple case with a thin stepped bezel sapphire crystals on top and bottom, along with a small crown on the right side. Hidden from view, underneath the lugs, are five correctors to adjust the super-complicated calendar movement.

The dial is rendered in beautiful green Grand Feu enamel. There are small Arabic date numerals on the periphery, pointed to by a hand that curves like a snake. Speaking of snakes, at 12 o’clock is a tiny aperture that reveals the animal of the Chinese Zodiac. You get applied white gold Roman numerals and dots at 12, 3 and 9 o’clock, while the moon phase aperture at 6 o’clock features Blancpain’s signature smiling moon face. The three sub-dials feature white enamel Mandarin inscriptions and indicate the signs of the zodiac, double hours, lunar months, lunar days, the presence or not of an intercalary month, the five different elements of the zodiac animal and a yin/yang symbol. Hard core.

To show all of this, Blancpain uses the incredibly complicated calibre 3638. Blancpain was one of the first brands to solve the issue of the Chinese calendar. That’s because the Traditional Chinese Calendar counts time differently than the Gregorian calendar, and it’s still used in China for agricultural production and to determine seasonal holidays. The Gregorian calendar is based on a solar day, while the Chinese is based on the cycle of the Moon and the Earth’s course around the Sun. Additionally, they also feature a different number of days and it adds an extra month depending on which year it is. Like I said, super complicated, but the 3638 manages to figure it out. The movement features three series-coupled barrels, giving it a truly incredible 7 day power reserve. The watch comes on a brown alligator strap.

The new Blancpain Villeret Traditional Chinese Calendar 2025 is limited to 50 pieces and priced at CHF 81,000. See more on the Blancpain website.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

1/

A review of the Citizen Promaster Land U822 JV1008-63E

2/

Hands on with Théo Auffret's Tourbillon à Paris

3/

A review of the Wren Diver One Snow

⚙️Watch Worthy

A look at an off beat, less known watch you might actually like

The RVNDSGN M1 is a welcome challenge to assumptions about minimalism

You may assume that the watch shows the hours on the inner markers, the minutes on the middle markers, and then the date along the outside perimeter, but one of those assumptions would be incorrect. Looking closer, there are only 4 markers between each hour on the dial, and that’s because they indicate quarters of an hour. Rather than a minute hand that traverses the dial once per hour, the quarters marker will flick over to the next slot every 15 minutes, until the hour marker catches up on the hour, every hour. If you need to know the precise time down to the minute, this isn’t the watch for you. If you’re wondering how the display was achieved, the M1 uses a domed sapphire crystal with a mask applied to create the marker cutouts, while the markers themselves rotate beneath.

Read the whole review on Time + Tide

⏲️Wait a minute

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• Atavist long-form articles are quickly becoming my favorite release of each month. Like this one on the importance of journalism. The Nazis feared journalist Carl von Ossietzky so much they sent him to a concentration camp. Could winning the Nobel Peace Prize save his life?

• A very interesting from Wired magazine about Microsoft, which is turning 50 years old next year. When Satya Nadella took over as CEO, the company was lumbering and uncool. He cleaned up a toxic culture, crafted the deal of the decade, and put Microsoft back on top.

• We may Google our symptoms or read up on WebMD, but by and large we trust our doctors. We have little choice—they’re the one’s who’ve been to medical school, they’re the ones who grant us access to the tests we need, they’re the ones with the power of the prescription pad. The idea that they might be lying or even purposefully misdiagnosing us is terrifying, and J. David McSwane’s painstaking investigation into the questionable deaths surrounding beloved doctor Dr. Thomas Weiner of St. Peter’s Hospital in Helena, Montana, is one of the more chilling malpractice stories I’ve read (and one of the most fantastically executed).

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

I love the new Defender. But where I live, it’s extremely expensive. So, when Toyota showed the new quirky looking Land Cruiser and announced they will be making the LC a bit more affordable, I thought this could be a cool car. I’m not sure any more, but this is still a spectacular review.

-Vuk