Product Test – Pluton Navitimer

This isn’t to say that the Navitimer Pluton is not a precision instrument well worthy of purchase. It is a fine watch, rated to close tolerances and with a combination of quartz, analog and digital displays making it a watch for all wearers.

But AADR suggests that Breitling do a lot more market research and come up with a wristwatch bearing the hallmarks of simplicity rather than a piece replete with gadgetry of assorted graduations.

In marketing the Pluton, Breitling obviously went for mass attraction rather than a specialist “buy”. This watch should sell extremely well to the enthusiast who is not necessarily a pro pilot but a student or newly-fledged PPL.

In our experience, we find that the more professional the pilot the less complicated his watch. But the whole subject, really academic, is a matter of horses for courses . . .

Quality: The Navitimer Pluton is a watch made like a proverbial gun. Having set it up by following a set of simple instructions (and in our case interpreting the English translation by referring to the French blurb in the booklet!), we found all settings dialled in by pressing various buttons to be simple to read in flight.

Operational Use: We found the zone time we’d dialled in most useful. It saved us from setting our normal watch to Zulu time – some of the aircraft AADR evaluates haven’t really got a reliable timepiece in the panel.

Design: Breitling has designed good watches for years, and their Navitimer Pluton is a credit to its design team in terms of size, weight and general appearance. The watch face – apart from its numerous supplementary dials – is• easy to read with a black face bearing luminous five-minute segment indicators.

What It Does:

• “Home” time: We synchronised the test watch by chronometer and found it accurate to within ±0. 30 of a second after a week’s normal wearing at various pressure differentials.

• Zone time: This was set and found to still be accurate and synchronised after a week’s use. One factor which niggled throughout our test period was the fact that the Navitimer Pluton really needed two hands to read out anything but Home time – unless one set Zone time in action and left it “ticking” in the centre digital readout panel.

• Stopwatch: A two-handed operation that doesn’t really Fit in with the old method of literally punching the stopwatch on The panel when flying radials. Stopwatch time, frozen at will and regainable in real time, counts up to 23 hours 59 minutes.

• Outer bezel: This carries the usual dot and arrow to pre-set time to tum, flying time left, etc. The bezel rotates in one direction only – anti-clockwise – and also carries a compass rose.

• Outer face dial: This carries what Breitling calls IFR and VFR flight levels. What it purports to do is give quadrantal heights but AADR found it impossible to reconcile quad heights flown. in this part of the world with the heights given on the outer dial.

• Inner face dial: This gives a scale showing minutes as the decimal part of an hour. From our experience and investigation, this type of readout is not practised anywhere in the world by pilots and is only of value to some ATC personnel in European regions, and for use in tacho readouts.

• Date and Month: Manipulation of the two operating buttons on our test watch gave the date and month in digital form.

In fair-weather flight, we found the need for both hands acceptable in manipulating the Pluton and developed a method of hanging on to the stick with one hand while working the buttons.

In moderate turbulence, however, the sort of weather which could mean flying to intercept radials and timing the passage, we found things a little more complicated.

We eventually relied on the cockpit clock’s sweep second hand.

We found the watch’s indications returned to the initial display after a 12-second lapse. Zone time, when selected stays on for as long as you wish.

Summing up, we liked the Pluton, its design, weight and finish. A minor and personal irritation at times was the flashing reflectivity of the bright metal bracelet in the sunshine.

Breitling has taken note of the oft-repeated plea by pilots to round off the sometimes sharp edges of the rotating bezel. Countless shirt cuffs have been frayed through the constant movement of that metal edge.

We also found that by using different permutations of button-pushing we could get combinations of seconds and dates, etc, but not really worthwhile and relevant operational information that could be of any possible use in flight or during flight planning.

But – for flight planning, date, month and Zone time are useful. In flight, the outer bezel, Zone time and stopwatch are all relevant to most pilot operations.

Minutes expressed as an hour’s decimal, as shown on the inner face dial, can be handy when interpreting some tachometer readings.

The Navitimer Pluton is a good buy for the enthusiast who likes lots of dials and readouts at the push of a button.