GMT owners...

[Mick P]

Originally Posted by AJMarcus

I thought home time was wherever you lived

Your home is America and your local time is meaningful only to you just as my local time is meaningless to you.

However the one time we do share is GMT.

Mick

[Roller07]

I set my GMT hand to Zulu time.

[Mick P]

Originally Posted by Roller07

I set my GMT hand to Zulu time.

Bad boy.

[blue lion]

It has a 4th hand?

[Rondineli]

Gee. We got it.
we got it.



Really. we. got. it.



yes, we did get it.


Compreende?

[Mick P]

Originally Posted by Rondineli

Gee. We got it.
we got it.



Really. we. got. it.



yes, we did get it.


Compreende?

You're welcome

[Old Expat Beast]

Originally Posted by Mick P

We all have local times, in fact right now this second, there are 24 local times throughout the world

Actually there are 40. Several countries have a 15, 30 or 45 minute difference over the hour.

Nostalgic as I am for my home country, setting the fourth hand to GMT would be nothing more than a pointless, impractical, and sentimental gesture.

[jjnd08]

Let's be realistic. If I said I was going to call you at 3pm tomorrow, I would send you an Outlook invite and you would have a reminder 15 minutes before I even called!

[Trog]

My GMT stays home when I travel.... especially to those $hit-holes my company sends me to. For those locations, my $10 airport special goes for the ride.

[Jerricho]

Originally Posted by Mick P

Yes but GMT is the one time recognised as a constant throughout the world.

That is why a Swiss watchmaker chose to call his watch a GMT. He did not use Swiss time, he used GMT. Therefore Pan Am pilots always had the GMT hour shown by the fourth hand even though they were an American company.

Mick

Pan Am pilots, like all pilots and Air Traffic Controllers when in the "office" operated on GMT/Z/UTC.

[Speed]

Originally Posted by Mick P

GMT = Greenwich Mean Time which is London time and that is home time to GMT.

It does not matter where you are in the world, the fourth hand should always be on GMT. That is how the watch got its name.

However if you are an American who will never travel to London, it may in reality, be a bit pointless to link up to GMT.

However to the pure Rolex GMT owner, the fourth hand remains constantly fixed on GMT no matter where you are.

Mick

I take issues with several assertions in this comment. Furthermore, I am not sure what a "pure" Rolex GMT owner is...

At any rate, I took a quick look for a very old thread in which Larry / Tools and a gentleman (with similar views to Mick P ) had a rather stimulating conversation about this matter. Larry made a (as only Larry can) strong case for the watch named "GMT" to be used in the manner I originally described.

Darned if I couldn't find the thread.

Folks can do as they please with their watches, but by cementing the 4th hand to GMT, you really overlook a basic (and very useful) function of the watch.

[Old Expat Beast]

Originally Posted by Mick P

Yes but GMT is the one time recognised as a constant throughout the world.

That is why a Swiss watchmaker chose to call his watch a GMT. He did not use Swiss time, he used GMT. Therefore Pan Am pilots always had the GMT hour shown by the fourth hand even though they were an American company.

Mick

In those days (pre GMT II) the hour hand and GMT hand were inseparable, so the Pan Am pilots couldn't have always had the fourth hand set to GMT, unless they were telling their local time off the rotated bezel, which seems unlikely.

[Kobayashi]

Originally Posted by Old Expat Beast

In those days (pre GMT II) the hour hand and GMT hand were inseparable, so the Pan Am pilots couldn't have always had the fourth hand set to GMT, unless they were telling their local time off the rotated bezel, which seems unlikely.

Agreed.

It wasn't until the 3085 caliber was introduced with the 16760 in 1983 did it become inseparable. Even then the 16700 was using the 3175 caliber (inseparable hands) until 1999.

Here are instructions for how to set your GMT watch from Rolex in 1959 (credit to Mondani GMT Master book).

[Jack T]

Sounds like fun, I'll have to get one!

[Rashid.bk]

A lot of language stating as some sort of fact on where the fourth hand should be. In reality it can be anywhere, it doesn't "have" to bet set to home time or "GMT" time. I could be in Dubai and set the fourth hand to Brazil and when I get to Brazil, I can reset the watch to local Brazil time and track the time in NY with the fourth hand where my kids are.

The watch is meant to track two time zones with the available hands on the dial, any two time zones(track whatever else using the bezel), or set both to track one time if you don't have a need, or let it wander aimlessly around the dial.

There's no "rule" for where it needs to be. Why the heck do I care about GMT time, it has no bearing in my life, why track it. When it becomes pertinent, I'll track it. That's what the GMT is for to track times that you need.

[HogwldFLTR]

Originally Posted by Mick P

Yes but GMT is the one time recognised as a constant throughout the world.

That is why a Swiss watchmaker chose to call his watch a GMT. He did not use Swiss time, he used GMT. Therefore Pan Am pilots always had the GMT hour shown by the fourth hand even though they were an American company.

Mick

Maybe so but the original GMTs have the fourth hand synchronized to match the home time (as also was pointed out by Adam). The bezel was rotated to match what ever time zone was desired. At least that is the way my 16700 works. I keep the bezel turned to my time zone to provide me with 24 hour time.

[G8RDPM]

I didn't read past the first page.
My opinion,this is the best under $12K watch! Home time is the answer to your question!

[T. Ferguson]

Originally Posted by Speed

I take issues with several assertions in this comment. Furthermore, I am not sure what a "pure" Rolex GMT owner is...

I think it means if you own a Sub and you don't scuba dive with it you're not "pure".

Originally Posted by Old Expat Beast

In those days (pre GMT II) the hour hand and GMT hand were inseparable, so the Pan Am pilots couldn't have always had the fourth hand set to GMT, unless they were telling their local time off the rotated bezel, which seems unlikely.

Exactly.

[Tools]

Originally Posted by Mick P

That is correct.

Fiddlesticks..

When the GMT was first conceived, the hands were synced together. They were always on the same time, your home time, whatever that was. You rotated the bezel to set another zone using the 24 hr hand. If it was meant to be set to GMT time, well, you could set any watch to GMT time-it was meant to rotate the bezel to GMT so as not to have to reset your watch and lose it's accuracy. It was that way for 35 years.

GMT is simply the name of the watch, not the time you are supposed to set it to.

With the advent of the GMT II in the 1980's with a separately adjustable hand it's flexibility was increased, but it still isn't "supposed" to be set to GMT time.

Here is what Rolex says about the GMT II.

"An evolution of the first model, the GMT-Master II was launched in 1982. In addition to conventional hour, minute and seconds hands, it features an arrow-tipped hand which circles the dial once every 24 hours as well as a bidirectional rotatable 24-hour graduated bezel. This 24-hour hand displays the reference time in a first time zone ('home' time for example), which can be read on the graduations on the bezel."

(I have simply restated what several separate posts demonstrate)

[T. Ferguson]

Originally Posted by Rashid.bk

There's no "rule" for where it needs to be. Why the heck do I care about GMT time, it has no bearing in my life, why track it. When it becomes pertinent, I'll track it. That's what the GMT is for to track times that you need.

That's my point. Whatever works for the owner. Glad I didn't have to memorize all the time zones in the world and their offsets to GMT in order to pass the AD test required to buy the watch.

[Rashid.bk]

Originally Posted by T. Ferguson

That's my point. Whatever works for the owner. Glad I didn't have to memorize all the time zones in the world and their offsets to GMT in order to pass the AD test required to buy the watch.

That's a big roj...

[AJMarcus]

This has become a quite entertaining thread

[CWIN]

Originally Posted by kam1

Set mine to GMT. Hour hand to home. Bezel to travel locale.

This is how I use mine

[Rondineli]

Originally Posted by Mick P

You're welcome

that was a joke

when I get my gmt YG with green dial ....
[dreaming about it for a moment]

okay, what was I saying?

Oh yeah, how to set the time? like this:

I will set the regular to Rome, the red hand to the North Pole time zone, and the bezel tracking Rio de Janeiro time, cuz I liked the city when I lived there.
For the time here in Texas I will in my head subtract 3 hrs from Rio time... (i think)

[SeaAndSky]

All the weather times on my release are given in GMT. Having the hand set to GMT enables me to quickly and without mental math assess the weather and needs for alternates and second alternates without having to do mental math. When working across time zones, being at home on the west coast after commuting from my base on the east coast, or traveling for fun, it's so easy to just rotate the bezel the corresponding number of time zones east or west and then read local time off the bezel as the rolex literature recommends. My two cents.

[tunes]

I just got mine, but my 4th hand will always be GMT. AS a pilot, 99.9% of everything i do is based on zulu time.

[Starbucksboss]

My office time thats 3 hours behind...

[Thunderbird88]

I work abroad and the last time its only been in China.
So when Im in China I have it set to Swedish time (GMT +1) and when I am home in Sweden on vacation I have it set to China time (GMT +7) because I still get calls from there etc.
Very handy watch for someone like me who needs to call all over the world, from China to Dubai, Los Angeles and so on.
And I prefer the GMT-Master II because of the quick set hour hand. Much better when flying through time zones all the time instead of the GMT-Master with the quick set date. I change hours 10x more than I change date.

I have no need to know what the GMT time is because my office is in Sweden, I need to know GMT +1 and at the same time need to know what time I have where I am (China at the moment).
Dont care if Im not using it as they wanted, I'm not even a pilot anyways.

[Brucie D]

My humble opinion: use it how you wanna use it. In Saskatchewan Canada I really don't need to know the time in London instantly so I keep it set to home time. Because our country is so vast, when I travel to Toronto or Vancouver for example I just jump the hour hand. It really works well for me. The nice thing about spending the better part of $10,000 on a watch is you get the right to make these decisions for yourself. Now here is a cool picture:





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[elcompa]

Originally Posted by Brucie D

My humble opinion: use it how you wanna use it. In Saskatchewan Canada I really don't need to know the time in London instantly so I keep it set to home time. Because our country is so vast, when I travel to Toronto or Vancouver for example I just jump the hour hand. It really works well for me. The nice thing about spending the better part of $10,000 on a watch is you get the right to make these decisions for yourself. Now here is a cool picture:





Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Dude, now that's what I'm talking about. Nice!