The Swiss-made Hamilton Khaki X-Mach Pilot’s Watch Replica

The now Swiss-owned and former American-based Hamilton brand, the first Hamilton Khaki X-Mach Pilot’s replica wrist watch and the world’s first electronic watch Hamilton Pulsar, is going to soon start selling its new Hamilton Khaki X-Mach automatic watch: the world’s first timepiece featuring a real Machmeter gauge!

For the non-pilots among us I must explain that a Machmeter is a special flight instrument that measures the ratio of the true airspeed to the speed of sound and when that ratio reaches “1.0” it means that you travel at the speed of sound, as simple as that.

Right, pilots among us will soon be able to put a real Machmeter on their wrists.

Simple in theory, right.

In practice, however, a Hamilton Khaki X-Mach‘s proud owner is supposed to calculate the speed of his or her airplane manually feeding the watch the pressure altitude and the calibrated air speed values.

The Hamilton Khaki X-Mach copy watch comes powered by the omnipresent Valjoux 7750 self-winding ebauche.

So, the Machmeter here is merely for design’s sake and, giving Hamilton’s designers their due, it serves its purpose well. At least, the Machmeter is not that banal as an ordinary tachymeter scale, which is also a pure decoration these days.

The rest of the story is more or less prosaic.

We’ve already seen this industry workhorse it in such timepieces as the vintage-inspired DOXA Ultraspeed, more military-looking Victorinox Alpnach, a monstrous Victorinox AirBoss Mach 6 Power Gauge and the gorgeous Chopard Mille Miglia GT XL Chrono Speed Black chronometer.

I don’t have a pilot’s license yet, but I somehow feel that in a real plane, which is capable of breaking the sound barrier there must be a dedicated gadget that does all these procedures automatically and with a lot better accuracy (and it doesn’t steal too much of your attention from actually piloting the plane, too.)

Show me a high-quality automatic chronograph watch and I will show you a 7750 happily ticking inside its case.

As to the dial, it perfectly serves its purpose of telling you the time thanks to its jet-black face and contrasting white-colored hands and Arabic numerals.

However, I highly doubt that you’ll be able to operate the “CAL. AIR SPEED” and the “PRESS. ALT. THOUSANDS of FT.” scales, unless you have a pair of eagle’s eyes.

Just like some other recent chronograph models, the X-Mach’s pair of pushpieces serves both practical and decorative purpose and also provide the crown some extra protection.

Photos: Hamilton

Hamilton Khaki X-Mach watch’s specification :

Price range: 1245 Euro, 1645 USD, 1895 CHF
Movement: Valjoux 7750, automatic
Complications: Machmeter, date, day of week
Power reserve: N/A but 7750-powered chronographs usually have a power reserve of some 46 hours
Case material: Stainless steel, transparent caseback with sapphire crystal
Case diameter: 44 mm
Case height: N/A
Dial: Black with white numerals and indices
Water resistance: 100 meters
Strap: Brown or black leather or rubber strap
Crystal: Sapphire

Talking about cases, in this particular, err, case, the mens fake Hamilton watch’s, err, case is a 44mm PVD-treated stainless steel job that comes fit with either a black or brown leather strap or a more modern-looking rubber bracelet.