Storm Navigator

Today's watch is one that I've been wanting since I'd first started collecting watches, but I'd not been able to afford it then while I was a student, and then it wasn't for sale anymore.

The watch is by the London based brand Storm and is called the Navigator.

The Storm brand began at the end of the 80s and have been producing many different interesting designs of watches.

The Storm Navigator was released in the mid 90s, and was one of the most high tech watches they produced at the time. The watch is large and pretty thick and the face shows 4 circular windows. It seems that the design was reissued, starting in 2009, and is currently for sale on the Storm website.

The Navigator has quite a few functions, and includes both analogue and digital time display with a 2 hand dial and a small LCD display with two rows of two digits (placed at the diagonals). It also has windows for an analogue thermometer, and a small compass. On the bottom section of the watch is an orange torch which lights for a few seconds after pressing the button.

Inside, all of the parts are in separate modules. Opening the back first reveals the torch module, and that needs to be removed to get to the rest of the modules. The thermometer and compass are small independent removable modules, and the two watch modules are also in separate slots. The analogue module is a standard Japanese quartz module, and the LCD module is a tiny unit, less than 1cm x 1cm and around 5mm thick.

DJ Honda Flash Beam

I've blogged a few watches before where a watch brand has collaborated with a DJ and released a model under both names. Today is a watch where the DJ appears, but with no manufacturers mark.

The watch is called the Flash Beam and is by DJ Honda. DJ Honda is the stage name of Katsuhiro Honda, who is a hip hop DJ, music producer, and runs his own clothing company. He has produced many tracks and has worked with the likes of Mos Def and Red man. The watch is part of the clothing company which was started in in the 1990s, and opened in New York in 2000, but I don't know when the watch was released. The clothing line (best known for it's top selling baseball caps) goes under the name h - displayed the font normally used for his full DJ name, and can be seen above the LCD display, and engraved into the back.

The watch itself is a quartz LCD watch with a 6 digit inverse LCD display, with day markers along the top. The watch is controlled by 4 buttons (two front and two side), and has alarm and stopwatch modes (and a button to display the date). The 5th button operates the Flash Beam which is an LED torch mounted on the left side of the watch. The flash beam was especially designed as a feature for some of his watches, and is there with the purpose of giving light while you operate your decks in a dark club!

The back shows just the model name DJ004 (and the label says DJ004-02), and with no module number, I can't tell if the watches were actually made by one of the larger manufacturers. The label that came with it also has the number 7978 but that isn't too helpful either. The original sale price was 12,000 yen.