Omega Releases First Bond Seamaster Chrono; Alpina And Watch Angels Help You Calculate Holding Patterns; Awake Is Getting Better And Better; Trafford Perfects The Crossroads; New Ferdinand Berthoud

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I’ve been avoiding the vast majority of the 007 First Light content because I loved the Nintendo64 version of GoldenEye so much. In fact, I remember it being a bit of an issue — I would rather not sleep than not play the game. So I was hoping to skip the First Light hysteria, but here goes Omega, and pushes me closer to the game.

In this issue

• Omega Releases The Seamaster Diver 300M Chronograph 007 First Light, Their First Bond Chrono

• Alpina Teams Up With Watch Angels For First Pilot Chrono That Can Calculate Holding Patterns

• The New Son Mài Guilloché Main Just Proves That Awake Is Getting Better And Better

• Trafford Watch Co. Perfects The Crossroads, Now Much Thinner And With Great Colors

• Ferdinand Berthoud Launches the Chronomètre FB 2TV Flying Tourbillon, Kicking Off The New Mesure du Temps 1787 Collection

👂What’s new

1/

Omega Releases The Seamaster Diver 300M Chronograph 007 First Light, Their First Bond Chrono

The Omega x Bond relationship started with GoldenEye in 1995, which means it started with Pierce Brosnan and, for anyone who grew up in the late '90s, it started with a Nintendo 64 controller in hand. I spent an embarrassing number of hours in the GoldenEye game, and the Seamaster on Brosnan's wrist was the coolest watch in the world before I knew anything about watches. So yes, I have feelings about this. The new Seamaster Diver 300M Chronograph 007 First Light is launching alongside 007 First Light, a standalone origin-story game from IO Interactive (the Hitman people) and Amazon MGM Studios, due out May 27th, and lauded as a possible N64 GoldenEye successor. It is also, notably, the first chronograph ever worn by James Bond in any medium.

The case is the existing Diver 300M Chronograph introduced in 2019, so no surprises on the architecture: lyre lugs, curved crown guards, a conical helium escape valve at 10 o'clock, ceramic pushers. It measures 44mm wide and 17mm thick, which is a big watch — lug-to-lug comes in just under 53mm. Even bigger. Polished and brushed finishes, sapphire crystals on both sides, and a unidirectional bezel with a black ceramic insert and white enamel 60-minute diving scale complete the package. The only external differentiator from the standard black reference is the caseback, which carries the 007 First Light logo in black metallisation on the underside of the glass. Water resistance is 300 meters.

The dial is all new. The base is the standard polished ceramic with laser-engraved waves, but the sub-dial ring at 3 o'clock gets a PVD bronze-gold treatment, and the same finish carries over to the central chronograph seconds hand. Everything else — indexes, remaining hands — is rhodium-plated with white Super-LumiNova. The Seamaster name is done in red. It's a restrained edition considering the IP it's tied to.

Inside is Omega's calibre 9900. It's an integrated automatic with column wheel and vertical clutch, co-axial escapement, antimagnetic components rated to 15,000 gauss, Master Chronometer certified, and running on two barrels for a 60-hour power reserve. The watch ships on a NATO strap in black, grey, and beige, and Omega is offering six additional game-inspired NATO options separately.

The Seamaster Diver 300M Chronograph 007 First Light is a special but not limited edition, priced at CHF 7,300 without taxes. See more on the Omega website.

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Alpina Teams Up With Watch Angels For First Pilot Chrono That Can Calculate Holding Patterns

Most pilot's watches borrow aviation aesthetics, and we love them for it. Whether it’s a recreation of a vintage pilot’s watch like Laco has been known to make, or a full-on homage to flight instruments like you can buy from Bell&Ross. This new watch from Alpina, made in collaboration with the Watch angels, the Startimer Pilot IFR Chronograph, looks like a traditional pilot’s chronograph, but actually has a novel mechanical complication. This watch will help you calculate how to enter and fly a holding pattern. A holding pattern, for the non-aviators among you (me included), is the oval loop aircraft fly while waiting for landing clearance — one of the more demanding phases of IFR flight, where pilots must determine the correct entry type (direct, teardrop, or parallel) based on their current heading and the inbound course. That procedure has now been translated into watchmaking hardware, which is either the most niche complication in recent memory or the most practically useful one, depending on whether you hold a pilot's license.

The case is 44.5mm wide and 15.8mm thick, built from stainless steel with a bidirectional black ceramic bezel and an anti-reflective convex sapphire crystal. The finishing combines vertically satin-brushed lugs with mirror-polished chamfers, and the lug-to-lug comes to 51mm. The IFR calculation system lives within the case components themselves — a push-release coupling bezel and an inner multi-level turning component that serves dual duty as dial ring and entry pattern calculator. Setting the watch involves two steps: align the inbound course on the bezel, then release and align the heading. The watch then displays the required entry type via color-coded apertures at 12 o'clock: orange for direct, red for teardrop, blue for parallel, along with all the courses and headings needed to fly the hold correctly. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The sunburst blue dial is busy, as any legitimate pilot's watch tends to be, but here’s there’s even more justification for it: polished metallic applied Arabic numerals filled with white lume, black hour and minute hands also in white lume, a 12-hour counter at 6 o'clock, a 15-minute counter at 12 o'clock, a running indicator disk at 9 o'clock, and a central orange hand for UTC. The two apertures that display the holding pattern entry type sit just below the 12 o'clock position.

Inside is the Sellita SW531b column wheel chronograph calibre, beating at 28,800vph with a 62-hour power reserve and 25 jewels. Each watch comes with two leather pilot straps — one light grey, one camel brown — both with stainless steel pin buckles and a quick-release system.

Orders open today, May 21st exclusively through the Watch Angels website at CHF 4,295 with shipping, local VAT, and import duties included. Limited to 300 pieces. See more on the Watch Angels website.

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The New Son Mài Guilloché Main Just Proves That Awake Is Getting Better And Better

The French independent brand Awake has been building something interesting since pivoting away from its limited-edition space-themed releases toward the Son Mai permanent collection built around Vietnamese lacquered dials. I’ve loved pretty much every one of their releases in the collection, but the new Son Mai Guilloché Main is a bit special and a bit fantastic, bringing in a second ancestral technique to the mix: hand guilloché, executed in Italy by the Renzetti family on 19th-century rose engine and straight-line lathes.

The case is familiar, 38mm wide and 11.5mm thick (10mm without crystal), down from the earlier 39mm by 11.8mm. The concave bezel is pleasantly rounded, the lugs are short, and the case alternates polished surfaces with brushed flanks. The screw-down crown ensures the water resistance of 100 meters.

Each of the three dials is completely distinct. The Sunset features a drape-moiré guilloché pattern from the 1930s — vertical waves engraved by straight-line lathe, then covered in natural lacquer with pink, violet and blue pigments in a gradient. The Alba dial has a helical guilloché radiating from the centre, then sent to Hanoi for sunrise-orange lacquering. The Borealis uses a complex, fluid guilloché with acid green, light green and yellow lacquer layers meant to evoke the Northern Lights. Awake's signature lume treatment carries over from the Frosted Leaf: indices and hands are blocks of SLN BGW9 capped with polished faceted steel overlays, so the luminous material glows from beneath.

The movement is the La Joux-Perret G101 automatic, which we've seen in earlier Son Mai editions. It beats at 4Hz with a 68-hour power reserve, which beats both the ETA 2824 and the Sellita SW200 on that front. This one also gets a customised tungsten rotor. Each version comes on a colour-coordinated Alcantara strap by Jean Rousseau with Awake's new micro-adjustable pin buckle allowing 3mm on-the-fly adjustments.

Each of the three versions — Sunset, Alba and Borealis — is limited to 200 pieces and priced at €2,650 excluding tax. See more on the Awake website.

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Trafford Watch Co. Perfects The Crossroads, Now Much Thinner And With Great Colors

The Crossroads is an important model for Trafford Watch Co. The Austin, Texas brand has built a following on the back of its Americana-inflected design language and Nathan Trafford's obvious eye for color. The newly announced Crossroads S makes the collection even more important in their lineup. Not only does it perfect the retro rectangular case, now significantly slimmer, but it’s also the brand's first Swiss Made watch.

The case comes in two sizes — the Crossroads S 40 (35x36mm) and the Crossroads S 36 (31x32mm) — both 9mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 46mm and 40mm respectively. You might ask why Trafford calls these models 40 and 36, insinuating they measure 40mm and 36mm, but are actually much smaller… That’s because the watches wear like 40mm and 36mm round watches. I like that communication. Both are made out of 316L stainless steel with a hardened coating. Up top is a double-domed sapphire crystal with an internal anti-reflective coating. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dials come in six colorways across three paired sets: Surf and Seafoam in oceanic teal and blue with yellow accents, Fern and Flora in forest green and pink, and Vine and Vellum in white and burgundy with light blue details. Each has a ribbed, sloped central section that casts a shifting shadow as the light changes across the dial, with polished applied Arabic numerals at the hours and syringe hands, both filled with color-matched lume. The result is clean and legible but avoids the trap of being boring. The color-matched lume is a nice touch. These dials clearly weren't assembled from a generic parts catalog.

The movement inside is the Sellita SW210, a hand-wound no-date movement that beats at 4Hz with 42 hours of power reserve. It’s also regulated to ±5 seconds per day. Each watch ships on a color-matched or contrasting Crazy Horse leather strap with contrasting stitching and quick-release spring bars. A full stainless steel bracelet with solid end links, a butterfly clasp, and an on-the-fly micro-adjuster is available for an additional $249.

The Trafford Watch Co. Crossroads S is priced at $899 and available for pre order right now. Go get it, quickly. The Flora, if you ask me. See more on the Trafford website.

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Ferdinand Berthoud Launches the Chronomètre FB 2TV Flying Tourbillon, Kicking Off The New Mesure du Temps 1787 Collection

Ferdinand Berthoud has been doing things the hard way since Karl-Friedrich Scheufele revived the brand in 2015, and the watches have been worth it. The inaugural FB 1 won the Aiguille d'Or at the GPHG. The FB 3SPC became the first wristwatch with a COSC-certified cylindrical balance spring. Last year's Naissance d'une Montre 3 pushed the movement architecture somewhere few would dare. Now comes the Chronomètre FB 2TV Flying Tourbillon, the first watch in a brand new collection called Mesure du Temps 1787, named after a treatise on timekeeping published by the historical Ferdinand Berthoud in that year.

The case is 44mm wide and 15.46mm thick, made out of ethical 18k white gold, and takes its shape from the 2020 FB 2RE Remontoir d'Egalité. It's a round watch with two box sapphire crystals front and back, and the portholes that characterized the FB 2RE are gone.

The hand-wound calibre FB-TV.FC measures 35.60mm in diameter and has 1,240 components, 777 of which belong to the fusée-and-chain alone. The flying tourbillon runs at 21,600vph, measures 15mm in diameter, and has three arms alternating between flat and sloping sections. Its variable-inertia balance uses four 18-carat gold fine-adjustment screws and a Phillips terminal curve spring. The fusée-and-chain has been entirely redeveloped with new geometry and a double superimposed Maltese cross stopwork system, while a differential mechanism keeps the movement running during winding. Power reserve has been extended from 53 to 60 hours and can be wound in roughly 6.25 turns of the crown.

Two details stand out as genuinely unusual even at this level. First: a stop-balance function that halts the movement when the crown is pulled, allowing to-the-second time setting. Second: a coaxial pusher on the crown that resets the seconds hand, either when the movement is stopped or in a flyback mode while the movement is running, enabling short interval measurements up to 60 seconds. These are rare features in a tourbillon. The time display is off-centered with a white varnished dial base, an engraved black varnished minutes track, and a 25.80mm central seconds hand that reads against a white lacquered inner bezel ring. The finish of the visible dial plate is hand-sanded natural nickel silver. The watch comes on a hand-stitched alligator strap with a white gold double-blade safety folding clasp.

Nearly 300 hours of manual finishing per watch, combined with the workshop's capacity, means Ferdinand Berthoud expects to produce 10 to 12 Chronomètre FB 2TV pieces per year, but it shouldn’t be a limited edition. Price is €383,000 including taxes. See more on the Ferdinand Berthoud website.

⏲️End links

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

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• Books, toys, blankets, and various other detritus are strewn across James Wade’s Toyota Sequoia as he and his family crisscross Texas on long road trips, at his wife’s insistence that “exploration and adventure are key to a happy childhood.” Sometimes it is chaos—and Wade is honest about that, with a wry humor. But sometimes, it is just lovely. You’ll want to jump in for this ride.

• You’ve likely experienced “sludge,” even if you didn’t know it. It’s the little bureaucratic annoyances involved in attempting to cancel a service or acquire a service, the small points of customer friction that companies and governments put in your way to make accomplishing something a minor, if vivid, nightmare. Think: being on hold for two hours to cancel a television service you no longer need, only to be upselled three times before they finally grant your wish. For Wired, Chris Colin, a non-coder, decided he’d try to vibe code an app to highlight sludgy experiences.

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