Friday, August 3, 2007

The First Citizen Skyhawk AT's Have Arrived!!

We were surprised and excited this morning when our first shipment of the all new Citizen Skyhawk AT Flight Computer Watches arrived from Citizen. We only received the signature rubber dive strap model, JY0000-02E. We assume that the steel bracelet model will follow in a few days.

UPDATE: 8/10/2007 - The bracelet model JY0000-53E has also arrived and is available for IMMDEIATE DELIVERY!

The really good news was that our first shipment was larger than we anticipated so we do have a small additional quantity available if you order quickly. This watch is so important we are offering it through all three of our Internet Websites. Feel free to order it through any of these links:

Top Flight Watches: Citizen Skyhawk AT, model JY0000-02E

Gem of the Day: Citizen Skyhawk AT, model JY0000-02E

Time 4 Tritium: Citizen Skyhawk AT, model JY0000-02E

Here are our first impressions. We will have new, additional photography and more information on our websites in the next few days.

First, the orange LED backlight for the digital displays is excellent! It's much brighter than we had anticipated with good coverage and no glare. This feature alone will win over virtually all older Citizen Skyhawk owners.

The normal black on gray LCD display has good contrast and is easy to read in both indoor light and bright sunlight.

We LOVE the analog battery charge display. This display is always on unless you are checking the Radio Control Atomic Clock setting. All our watches arrived fully charged and ready to operate.

Another great and unexpected feature is the home city LCD window that shows you the setting for the ANALOG display. This is a great feature when you are setting the watch to different time zones. The watch also has a permanent home city 24 hour subdial so you know the exact daypart for your analog setting.

This "home city" 24 hour subdial is completely separate from the 24 hour UTC or ZULU time subdial (below the 12'clock position on the watch face). All of this is so intuitive that this quickly becomes the perfect world time watch! The fact that Citizen also recognized the need to set up the watch for 29 time zones (instead of the original 22 time zones on older models) makes this a full fledged world time computer.

The watch will attempt to "sync" with the atomic clock three times each night (at 2 am, 3 am and 4 am). We were able to initiate the "on demand" sync at about 6 pm here in Mississippi, but only by going outdoors. We expect night reception will be vastly better, but we will keep you informed.

Since the watch is extremely accurate, there should be no problems if your watch fails to "sync" each night.

We'll file some additional reports here in the next few days, but our first impressions are extremely favorable. The only real problem we anticipate will be the previously announced lack of availability. If you are going to want one of these watches this fall or Christmas, please order very, very early. They will be sold out.