Major incident with my PPC!!!

Dear all,

I have finally found the one major drawback with the fantastic 7 day power reserve in many of the IWC watches. And it is the 7 days themselves!!
With all my other watches with the "standard" 42-50 hour power reserve I just leave the watch winders running at all times with their daily cycles which keep all of them running.
With my treasured PPC I have been turning the winder off when the power reserve is full - probably just a stupid thing to do, but a habit I have, just like letting chargeable batteries mostly run dry before re-charging them to optimize their lifetime and performance.
Well, guess what - last night my PPC had stopped for the first time since I first put it on in August!!! Catastrophe - disaster - and of course I discovered it just around midnight when it is not recommended to adjust the watch!!!!

That 7 day power reserve makes you forget how many days it was since you last wore the watch or since you last wound it :-)

Lesson to self: let the winder keep going at all times :o)

Hello Skule,
I have a slightly different opinion. I also had my PPC on a watch winder but I stopped this practice. The Pellaton winding system is so efficient that approx. 380 cycles per day have been fully sufficient to keep the power reserve on the same level. A lot of watch winders run at 700 to 800 cycles per day (and cannot be adjusted to lower cycle numbers), therefore causing unnecessary wear in the fully wound main spring of the PPC.
As the calendar function of IWC's PPCs can be adjusted so easily I prefer to lose the power reserve and to wind the watch when it gets wrist time.
Urs

No winder for me. If you have the practice to wind some watches once a week, like on a nice Sunday morning, you run a risk that 7 days power reserve is not enough, therefore the Portofino top model has a power reserve of 8 days. And then, what to do on a holiday? I don't take the Portuguese Perpetual Calendar with me, so it runs out: for those circumstances the quick adjustment feature is there: don't rush, and within a minute or so the watch is on the spot again.

Kind regards,
Paul

Skule. Sorry to hear you broke your stride of continually running your Portuguese Perpetual. I guess it would be neat to know your watch was running continuously since you owned it...

I am not so sure there is any issue with the watch stopping around midnight - all you need to do is pull the crown to advance the time forward to ensure the date/complications advance - before advancing to the next date. Its only not recommended to use the date quick-set function around midnight...

I have had my perpetuals on winders for years. No problems.

Don't worry Skule - just follow Ardoise's comments and the incident feelings will pass their transient moment of crisis.