Omega

valerian1
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New Arrival Blue Dial 176.007

Long on words but short on (my usual rubbishy) pics but never mind. While in Edinburgh sampling the delights of the festival a couple of weeks ago I was having a bit of a mooch around a well known AD and got talking to the manager who had spotted the Flightmaster I was wearing and asked me if I could have a look at some photos of a watch he had at home. Turns out it was an unrestored 176.007 with original dial and a blue tachymeter scale! I told him a bit about the watch, which he'd bought at a house clearance years ago and hadn't really done anything with in the interim. He asked if I knew how to date Omegas as his wife was offering to pay for it to be serviced and restored for his 40th birthday if he could establish that it was a birth year watch. I duly told him how to find serial number tables online and we agreed that if it isn't a birth year he'd give me first refusal. Well his bad luck turned into my good fortune and I now (briefly as it's being put away until Santa comes) have my hot little hands on this beauty.
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[URL=http://s651.photobucket.com/user/brownip/media/P1030002_zps8cb50a87.jpg.html][/URL]

First time ever a wach on my must haves list has found me rather than me having to go on a long frustrating hunt. No bracelet unfortunately, but I think the Hirsch strap sets the dial off nicely and I also have the correct Omega corfam rally strap & period correct buckle which it'll reside on post a trip to STS. Had it running for a couple of days and all functions are running sweet as the proverbial re time keeping and chrono functions, my local watchmaker checked caseback, serial and movement no.s were in place and the condition of movement. All fine so I'm one happy boy!

The detail has been covered in several other posts but the reference 176.001 was introduced in 1971 and  replaced by this ref. 176.007 in 1972, both contained the calibre 1040 movement. Dark blue, silver or a greyish dial with tachometric, pulsometric or telemetric scale dial with minute circle and strokes to 1/5th of a second, polished and riveted baguette hour markers with tritium dots, or printed baton markers with tritium blocks, luminous baton hands, large centre chronograph seconds hand in blue or white, centre 60 minute chronograph hand with a white, blue or orange arrowhead tip, 12 hour counter at 6 o'clock, continuous small seconds and 24 hour indicator at 9 o'clock. Came with either an integrated steel bracelet or black corfam rally strap. It was also avaialble in gold plate, which was the this version given to Albert Piguet, the inventor of the calibre 321 and it's successor calibre 861 on his retirement from Omega in 1977.

The 1040 movement was also found in the pilot cased Seamaster 176.002, the original Jedi TV cased Seamaster ref 176.005, the yachting Seamaster with countdown bezel and the Speedmasters Mark III and Mark IV. Lemania made 82,200 of these for Omega, it was also used by Tissot and Bucherer in some of their chronos at the time. The 1040 was Omega's first automatic chronograph. It has a frequency of 28,000 vph. and was developed by Raoul-Henri Erard at Lemania. It's one of the first instances of Omega using a rotor mounted on ball bearings, a system that was only patented at the end of Dec 1970. The tweaked chronometer grade version of the movement (2,000 pieces made) was used in the Speedmaster 125, Omega's first chronometer rated chronograph. Oh and it looks blinkin' cool as well!

Cheers

Ian

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