Alas, we managed to get our hands on a GO Sport Impact Chronograph and decided to put it to the test.



GO claim "Optimum protection of the movement as well as the unlimited use in the field of sports has been the focus of the construction and development efforts." The construction of the watch features a movement (Cal 39) that is suspended in the center of the case by four elastomer shock absorbers. The elastomer is developed in conjunction with Fraunhofer technology and the literature states that this takes up ~60% of the shock applied to the watch.

Golf & Horology!
Previously this was sheer impossibility in the industry and wearing your automatic watch would mean that the moment you struck that golf ball with the clubface, the vibration and extreme sudden G-forces generated by the impact would doom your mechanical watch back to the service center. Mechanical watches and the fine sport of golf used to be at loggerheads with the people that were purveyors of both fine hobbies - The GO Impact chrono puts an end to that and we are out to test it.


Unfortunately, I don’t know a thing about golf except that the dimples on the ball make it fly further and here’s why exactly: the dimple roughness causes the air flow around the ball to transition from laminar to turbulent. The turbulent flow has more energy than the laminar flow and thus, the flow stays attached longer and golf ball goes further. Dimples are used because of this chap called Osbourne Reynolds who came up with a clever way of performing dimensional analysis of fluid dynamics. I will now stop here for fear of being bashed on the head with a minute repeater gong spewing offending out-of-topic-chatter concerning fluid dynamics and boundary layer flow.



The was a kind gentleman named “WMclarenF1” who volunteered his golfing skills to illustrate the clash of Sport vs. teutonic Handmade in Germany engineering skill.

The watch was assessed in 5 positions on a MTC-3000 watch timing machine.
The lift angle setting was 53 degrees for all measurement and this was confirmed with the factory to be correct for the GO Cal 39 movement.
The watch was always measured in the fully wound state for all measurements and the factory variation was once again requested.

The immediate thing noticed about this watch is that it's very quiet. You can barely hear the ticking of the watch.
This phenomenon is presumably cos the movement of the watch is suspended and well insulated from the case of the watch.
The next time you have an opportunity in the AD to handle one - notice its ticking ...or lack of.

The is the data obtained on a fresh watch before it hit the golf course

The watch was then handed to our kind tester and worn on one of the finest courses in Asia.


Our Man Sir WMclarenF1's golfing credentials and the tally of what the watch received on the course





The watch was returned and brought back to the MTC-3000 machine for timing evalution.

Conclusion:

It seems that a round on the golf course did nothing much to the timing of the watch. I cannot however adequately explain why the dial down position shows -4 sec. My best guess is that this was a brand new watch and perhaps the 'running in phase' (eg, oil working into the movement?) still applied and this could have been the cause??

The amplitude variation between having the movement in horizontal and vertical positions were expected.
This can be explained: when you have a position like crown left, the balance wheel staff is now sitting parallel to the tabletop and the wheel staff ends are sitting on the balance staff jewels. You'd expect somewhat slightly more friction in this position as opposed to dial up or dial down  where the balance staff now sits vertically like a spinning top in the end jewels. This horizontal position of the balance staff has more friction and the amplitude of the watch drops.

Ok so we havent broken the watch - shock impact works!

To read the rest of decksurgeon's post in GO forum, please CLICK HERE

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