High Flying Eye: Reviewing the Longines Avigation BigEye
Inspired by a chronograph from the 1930s, the Longines Avigation BigEye unites aviation history and modern watchmaking and boasts a column-wheel movement manufactured exclusively for Longines. We review the watch in this feature from our June 2018 issue.
Longines Avigation BigEye
Why is this chronograph named ?BigEye?" You can see the reason staring at you when you look at the dial: a large counter at 3 o?clock on the Longines Avigation BigEye tallies the elapsed minutes. It also helps you time your 5-minute boiled egg for breakfast. But heads up! The long index strokes mark every third minute and not, as is more common, every fifth minute. So when the hand reaches the first stroke, your egg is still almost raw, and when it reaches the second stroke, that same egg is already hard-boiled. The gradual creeping motion of the arrow-shaped elapsed-minute hand is unusual also. You?ll need to look closely if you want to read elapsed intervals precisely, but the scales are neatly printed and easy to read. The subdial at 6 o?clock counts 12 elapsed hours. The hand above this disk also advances continuously over the subdivisions, where Arabic numerals with square dots mark the full hours, and slender white strokes show the half hours. The model is based on a Longines pilots’ watch from the 1930s (above).
There is no date indicator, but the time display, the small seconds at 9 o?clock and the stopwatch cadrature all belong to Caliber L688.2, which is based on ETA Valgranges...
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