Bill Sohne
1637
Review-Omega: Omega Aqua Terra in the desert field test
The post on the Seamaster in the wild reminded me of a brief article I once wrote on the Aqua Terra's performance during a trip through the Sahara desert. I could not find that article neither here, nor on the thePuristS site, and considered it lost. However, a search via Google produced some links to it, and it apparently is buried somewhere among the old materials of the PuristS, but not here at PuristSPro.
If you don't mind, I would like to republish it here:
In 2002, I had the opportunity to test some watches during a trip through the Algerian Sahara desert. The watches were given to us for that purpose by the manufacturers, and represented a wide spectre from multifunctional quartz (Tissot T-Touch, Casio GPS) to more or less classic mechanical timepieces (Sinn, Limes, Omega). I was very astonished, when Omega sent me a brand new AquaTerra to participate in this test.
This watch seemed to be fully out of place, since it was so thin, appeared very elegant, and had these fine, polished markers and hands. I replaced the steel bracelet with a simple black leather strap from Glycine, since it was a condition that the strap could be adapted to different persons without tools. 
Somehow, I expected the Omega to fail, confronted with heat, dust, sand and massive vibrations. Additionally, I did not think it would be legible enough at night or in adverse lighting conditions.
Strangely, I was to be proved the contrary. Part of the test was that every watch should spend at least one day on the wrist of our motorbikers. These two crazy men 
dashed over stones and sand, mostly standing on the footrests, in order to reduce the strain on their backsides. You can imagine that 12 hours rattling and vibrating on their wrists is not a nice treatment for mechanical watches. What astonished me, was the result: While all mechanical watches lost their normal accuracy after such a day, to regain their normal rate only after two or three days, the Omega behaved as if never anything had happened: It had just the same +2 seconds rate, as it had all the other days.
Additionally, the AquaTerra proved to be the most legible watch of all, even compared with the new Sinn 756 chronograph. The real test was not in the night, or in bright sunshine, but in the time between: In dawn or dusk. You know the situation in a cinema or theater? You want to know the time, but somehow, the ambient light is not strong enough to see the details on the dial, but too strong to overshine the luminous mass on hands and markers. The same problem was encountered at the campfire: You just could not see any detail on that Sinn's dial; nor I could on any other watch - except the Omega. Not because of its luminous parts, which are not very large. But due to the faceted, highly polished markers and hands, every faint shine light is reflected, making hands and markers stand out clearly against the black dial. Even bare starlight was enough to read the time at a glimpse.
The only thing which was not undestroyable enough was the polished case, which, of course, became massively scratched after but three weeks of desert digging.
Leaving that aside, I would take this watch for an adventure trip anytime. And additionally, it serves as an elegant dress watch. It was really nice to see that Omega built a fine, elegant watch, which does not have to fear rough treatment.
Regards,
Marcus
