{"id":32488,"date":"2023-01-18T11:38:30","date_gmt":"2023-01-18T18:38:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=32488"},"modified":"2023-01-18T11:45:03","modified_gmt":"2023-01-18T18:45:03","slug":"round-dials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=32488","title":{"rendered":"Round Dials"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my day, aircraft instrument panels came with round dials, and lots of ’em. That’s an F-15 Eagle cockpit on the left, the most modern jet I ever flew. On the right, the cockpit of an F-35 Lightning II.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"F-15<\/a><\/td>\n\"F-35<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

<\/center>They’re starting to call geezers like me round-dial pilots, which conjures up images of cavalry officers and locomotive brakemen. What do they call the generation of pilots starting out in aircraft with flat panel displays like the F-35? I don’t know. Do they even have a name yet?<\/p>\n

You knew I was going to segue to watches, didn’t you? Sure you did.<\/p>\n

Like the instruments in the aircraft I flew, the watches and clocks I grew up with were round and mechanical, the way God made them. I looked down on the quartz watches that started getting popular in the 1970s, especially the ones with digital displays. I didn’t hate them, exactly \u2014 not until the ones that made piercing electronic peeps and beeps came along.<\/p>\n

Sometime in 1979 or 1980, the Casio on a squadron mate’s wrist went off during a mass mission briefing at Soesterberg Air Base, playing the entire 125 bars of F\u00fcr Elise because he couldn’t figure out how to shut it off. I remember thinking “I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a watch that does that.”<\/p>\n

I never flew with a quartz watch, analog or digital, but did pick up a few after retiring from the Air Force. Since I’ve shared photos of my mechanical watch collection<\/a><\/strong>, I thought it only fair to document the quartz collection, too.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_5560\"<\/a>
click for details<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’ve had the one silver and two black Casios for years, but the Timex watches, the two outside ones, are new. And I wear them … a lot. They’re great looking pieces with comfortable leather bands, and don’t require setting or winding every time I want to wear one. But what I wanted to remark on is this: it didn’t really hit me until I laid them out for the photo that apart from the small inset digital window on the top Casio, my quartz watches look like mechanical watches. Which I guess more than confirms my traditionalist mindset. I”m Team Round Dial, all the way.<\/p>\n

To which you’re probably saying “okay boomer.” As you should. Because I am. But ask me if I’d like to fly the F-35, and I’d have to say “Oh hell yes.” I’d whore out to that digital cockpit in a second!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my day, aircraft instrument panels came with round dials, and lots of ’em.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,3,14,2,415],"tags":[4053,4146,4147],"class_list":["post-32488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumerism","category-flying","category-military","category-personal","category-products","tag-bigseikolittledick-2","tag-steampoweredaviation","tag-teamanalog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32488"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32502,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32488\/revisions\/32502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}