September 27th 2009 the CX Swiss Military Watch™ timepiece 20’000 FEET had to undergo yet another demanding real life test: it was dropped from an altitude of a staggering 5’000 feet during a parachute jump! The test was organized by a former member of the German Special Forces and took place at the quaint town of Hassfurt in Germany, some 700 kilometers north of Liestal, the headquarters of Montres Charmex SA (the manufacturer of the 20’000 FEET). A hand-picked team consisting of Frank M. Bürgin, the CEO of Montres Charmex SA, two former members of the German Special Forces and an active colonel of a German parachute regiment as witnesses as well as two cameramen were taken up to an altitude of over 13’000 feet in a Swiss Made Pilatus Porter airplane. After the exit the parachutists went on a freefall down to 5’000 feet and there pulled their parachutes; at this very moment the 20’000 FEET, marked with a 3 foot ribbon, was dropped and accelerated to over 600km/h before hitting the grass next to the runway. The impact energy of an object weighing some 300 grams and falling from 5’000 feet is roughly 4,4kj – the equivalent of dropping 100kg from a height of 15 feet! Upon landing the members of the team rushed to find the 20’000 FEET and verified that the timepiece was still in perfect working condition and – yes – still ticking. The incredible impact had neither damaged the watch case nor the movement, which is protected by a special anti- shock device developed by the R&D team of Montres Charmex SA. The 20’000 FEET by CX Swiss Military Watch™ truly deserves to be called “indestructible” so!

Frank,

Can you tell us more about that anti shock device? This is quite an impressive feat. Have you considered licensing the use of your anti shock device to other brands?

Perfect experiment Frank ,
No other watchmaker did something like this and no other will do it in the future apart CX .

Regards and Respect

Christos

One of the many challenges you face when producing what is meant to be a virtually indestructable watch is how to protect the mechanical movement within a indestructible case - it is rather easy to come up with an extremely sturdy quartz watch but as soon as you use a mechanical movement you have to start thinking about how to keep the moving parts of the movement from taking permanent damage due to shock. All of you playing golf know that you will regret wearing your expensive mechanical watch while on the green - the tremendous centrifugal forces will most likely wreck havoc with the balance wheels etc. This of course also applies to our 20'000 FEET: if we want the watch and thus the movement to survive anything you can throw at it (like being shot at or dropping from 1'500 meters) we cannot only rely on the incabloc protection which is an integral part of the ETA 7750. We therefore came up with what you might want to describe as a "suspension" system for the movement, using an improved movement holder and a completly new way of connecting movement and movement holder. As you can tell from our series of real life tests - the latest being the FREEFALL http://www.20000feet.com/?play=skydive - our system works and adds a distinctive USP to our product. We therefore don't plan on licensing out this technology to other manufacturers.

Amazing! Really impressive.

I am sure we all know people who literally could break a rock. This could be the one thing they could not break! =)