Pilot Watch Help

Yes a Laco is a solid choice, if you want traditional/heritage. Or if you can spend a little more, a Stowa. Or if you want a modern take on a type B Flieger, Hamilton is a good shout...

Hamilton is my favorite value watch. IWC is my passion favorite 

For excellent quality that won’t break the bank, can I suggest a Glycine Airman?

Thank you!  Nice watch…

That’s two nods for Hamilton, thank you!

Yes you may, looking at them now.  

Escapement Time and San Martin both have beautifully made fliegers. 

Very reasonably priced, too.

36mm cream dial 🤤

I purchased the Laco Bielefeld 42mm a few months ago and have been extremely happy with it. The quality for the price is excellent.

That said, I would strongly recommend spending the extra $60 for AR coating on the in- and outside of the sapphire crystal. The legibility and clarity that this adds is outstanding.

While Laco does have the heritage, I have heard debate over the merits of the Aachen owing to the fact that it uses a modified Miyota 8000 series movement and $400 is a lot of money for a watch with a Miyota movement, even if the movement is tested and regulated in Germany. Laco does make other models using Swiss movements, but they are much more expensive. I have no personal experience with Farer, but their watches look good and use Swiss movements. I have an alternate suggestion; an Islander pilot watch. You can get either Flieger style dial in both 39mm and 43mm in a variety of colors. Below are mine, a 39mm Type A black dial and a 43mm Type B red dial.

Both use NH movements, have sapphire crystal, 100M WR, and screw down crowns.

Plenty of great type b fliegers out there at many price ranges. Vostok 811171 811172, seiko 809, the new seiko version of the 809 (Can’t rem the model number) escapement time have type a & b, addiesdive have a type a Little over 100, Hamilton have many type b fliegers both quartz and mechanical, orient flight looks dope, there is tandorio_watch on eBay that sell several styles of flieger, Long Island watch has the “islander” flieger which looks cool, San martin gots some, laco, stowa, iwc, citizen have some eco drive fliegers, And I’m sure many more.

I'm not as versed on the Pilot genre as others here, however of the two choices OP posted I'd go for the "fun/modern" Farer, but that's just me. 

With no budget constraints, I agree with the experts above about IWC 

save for a bit and get an IWC big pilot  :)   

I've had a Laco Aachen 42 for a while and I'd recommend it without reservation. I will say, it's all dial and at 42mm it's as big as I'd want to go on my 7 3/4" wrist.

I like it enough to get one of the new Oliv series watches.

If not too much trouble could you post some pics on wrist?  
Thanks…

Some will say, "Laco! The heritage! They made watches for the Luftwaffe! Isn't that great?!" And, to them, that's super important. To others, having a watch supplied to the Nazi regime doesn't go down well at all. I sit somewhere in the middle, ie: it's no different to driving a Mercedes-Benz today. The company is it's own thing; it's not even owned by the people who owned it back in the 1930s, so sins of the past shouldn't really be attributed to it today. That said, just as I wouldn't lead a conversation with, "I drive a Mercedes; the Nazis loved these things back in the day!" I wouldn't open with, "I wear a Laco, the Luftwaffe were mad for these watches!" Yet this kind of subtlety goes flying over a lot of YouTubers heads when they make videos about Laco watches (and the other brands that supplied the Nazis), seemingly not equating the Luftwaffe with the Nazis. Quite odd. Outside of that, the cheaper Laco's have, as people have stated, very mediocre Miyota underpinnings, so you're paying a lot for the name and a "Made in Germany" tag that's not as strong as it could be. And I think once you get over that hump of whether to have a cheap Laco for the name or not (if it was ever a hump at all for you), a world of flieger options opens up for you. I'd get something like one of the sterile dial fliegers from Island Watch, for example, and call it a day.

Exactly! I have had the same experience as you. i appreciate the history, but you’re right -  I’ve  only had someone ask about it once, but I said “it’s a German design from WW2” their reply: “So…Nazis?”

 That said I prefer the more modern pilot watches, like the Sinn 556 or the Damasko Ds30. Stowa makes a modern pilot watch too, as does Dekla. Those may be worth checking out for you, OP!

that depends on your direction i think. if you want vintage inspired watch with true heritage than aachen is the winner. i own laco aachen 39mm for about one year and i think it is a decent watch with a good spec (saphirre crystal, good leather strap). my only complain is just the strap proportion is too small 18mm.

but if you want modern take on the flieger then i guess vaer is the winner. it is a well design watch with nice swiss sellita movement but from quick research i think it is more pricy than the aachen

Good looking watch, curious if you've put it on a leather strap.  May I ask what size wrist you have?  

Thanks for the help....

No but Im going to buy a black riveted one. 6.5-7inch I think. But not particularly big!

Great video!   Thanks for sharing....

Yup, it's an association that I can sort out and separate in my head... just like driving a Mercedes-Benz or wearing a Hugo Boss suit... but it's still there. All it takes is just one person, like in your example, to ask the 'Nazis question' and any self-respecting, honest watch owner would have to say, yup, an earlier incarnation of this company supplied these kind of watches to the Luftwaffe. Because ultimately, that's what it is.

I try to stay away from those types of people... ones that seem to be able to be offended over everything.

Ever have a Bayer aspirin? Made by part of the same conglomerate that made Zyklon B, and used concentration camp slave labor. Most, or all, surviving German companies were involved in the war effort at some level or another.

If you want to play both sides of the fence, get an IWC flieger. They sold to the Allies and the Axis during WWII!

I'm about as far as you can get from a Nazi apologist, but the next time someone questions you about your German watch ask them if they've bought anything Chinese lately. Maybe they should educate themselves on what they are doing now...

You make really good points. It’s not like many of these companies had a choice but to supply the military back then, right? 

I can still  appreciate the watch’s design, but I’ll admit that I’m tending to fall for watches that have an exploratory connection (like mountaineering,  diving, or flying without the intent to bomb something) rather than military heritage. Certainly nothing wrong with the Laco , but I think it’s just not for me. 

What did you go with?

Haven’t yet, sometimes one can have too many options…. 

Stowa/Laco/Whatever. Not really a big name, but at least some history.

That said, all of their flieger watches look the same. You could get a 100$ aliexpress one, and it will look the same. So who cares.

I'd get the Farer without thinking twice, because it has a way better designed dial, and it does NOT look like all the other 99% of flieger watches out there.

It's interesting when people focus on the history of the company when it comes to the Germans, how far back do we go? The brewery giant in England Greene King, has a very colourful history but no-one thinks of that when they are in their pubs. I recently bought the laco 42 as I didn't want an 18mm strap and love the watch, highly recommend no matter the history 👍

First you have to decide if you want a "flieger" or an aviation watch, not the same. Lots of both our there. Second, budget of course. While the dials look the same on true fliegers, the quality of the watch varies from Chinese junk to Stowa and to a trained eye, do not "look the same" other than the dial, and even that looks different to a discerning collector.