IWC Pilot’s Watch Timezoner Top Gun Woodland Features Green Ceramic Case and Cities Bezel

Alongside the new Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Top Gun Mojave Desert, IWC have launched this, the Pilot’s Watch Timezoner Top Gun Woodland. It’s a green ceramic take on one of their less common Pilot’s Watch complications, the worldtimer. A worldtimer is a complication that allows you to tell the time across the world simultaneously and as such is one of the premier travel complications, which is why it makes a lot of sense on a pilot’s watch.

If you want to get into the weeds of technicalities, the Timezoner is slightly different to what we traditionally think of when we picture a worldtimer. Most commonly a worldtimer works in conjunction with a GMT complication, a 24-hour hand, that points to the ring of 24 time zones and cities around the periphery. The Timezoner does away with the GMT hand and instead has a 24-hour display in a window from 11 o’clock to 1 o’clock on the dial.

On top of that, the entire complication is controlled by the ceratanium bezel. Ceratanium is IWC’s proprietary material that combines the structural integrity of titanium with the scratch resistance and hardness of ceramic. By pushing down on the bezel and rotating it not only do you move the 24 time zones and their respective cities, the hour hand, 24-hour display and date will all change to match, making it incredibly easy to adjust your watch to the correct time zones you want it to display.

In terms of this being the Woodland edition, it features a green ceramic bezel insert, a green ceramic 46mm diameter case and a green dial. It’s a very dark shade of green inspired by military flight suits. A flash of colour is brought to the piece by the red lettering of the word Timezoner on the dial and UTC (coordinated universal time) on the bezel.

This watch is powered by the Calibre 82760, an automatic movement with 60-hour power reserve. That’s the same movement as used in the previous full ceratanium edition of the Timezoner. Which is doubly relevant because the Top Gun Woodland edition also shares the same price at £15,900.

Ultimately the IWC Pilot’s Watch Timezoner Top Gun Woodland is a cool watch and a really interesting watchmaking exercise thanks to the integrated action between the bezel and complications. I just struggle a little bit to visualise who would actually buy it. It’s very big and it’s got a pretty high price. For only twice the price you could have a perpetual calendar or for much less you could have the more popular and more iconic standard Big Pilot’s Watch or Pilot’s Watch. This is the definition of a niche collector’s piece.

More details at IWC.

​Oracle Time 

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