Ok, let’s have a break from the perpertual calendars for a bit, now, shall we? Today’s watch offers up a great mix of form and function, and goes by the name of SparrowHawk II.
For those of you who haven’t heard of Techné Instruments, don’t feel bad. They are a relatively new company, founded in 2009 and headquartered in Switzerland. Many of their watches draw inspiration from aviation instrumentation (as we’ll see in a bit), and the company does support the Asia Foundation non-profit.
We’ll start off this review focusing in on appearance of the piece. The particular review model sent over, the 446.33 PVD Khaki (link) simply oozes what I dig in the retro-inspired aviator style watches. Here, the tan and black color combo just plain works. While you’ve only got the large numerals for 12 and 6, the minutes (on the fives) are detailed out on the outer edge of the dial. A small detail, but well executed.
Going around the remainder of the dial, we’ve got a 24-hour indicator at the 3 o’clock position, sub-seconds at 6 o’clock, and a 60 minute register at 9 o’clock (yup, it’s a chrono; more on the uniqueness of that in a bit). And of course, we’ve got the date display between 4 and 5 o’clock. The white is a minor distraction in the color scheme, but it’s not a deal-breaker.
So, now that we’ve got the looks out of the way, it’s time for us to take a closer look at why this watch is called a meca-quartz. Of course, for that, you’ll need to see tomorrow’s post!
