Have you ever heard of Formex? No? Don't worry, you are not alone. Even though Formex is a more than 20 years old family owned Swiss company, it is less known than it should be. 

At the end of year 2022 Raketa announced the release of the new watch dedicated to the USSR space travel history. This time the focus was on the first satellite "Sputnik 1" which was launched in 1957. So the new watch celebrates the 65th anniversary of this achievement. 

Fortis. As far as I remember one of my first Swiss brand that joined my collection. And from that moment one of my most beloved brands. Let me explain, why.

I receive a lot of adverts from different web watch stores daily. Most of them are just ignored, but from time to time something attracts my attention. One of the ones was the advert from one shop, offering a huge discount for GEVRIL watches. I admit, I have never heard of that brand, or to be more exact, I did know of it's existence, but that was it. So I clicked to the link. 

It was end of October 2022, when I received an email from Julian Kampmann from Poljot24.de shop, stating that he has become an official retailer for the watch brand Kleynod from Kyiv watch company in Ukraine. I had to read it again! Kley what?? Brand from Ukraine? Never heard. So I had to go into action..

Until 1969 USSR space program has always been one step ahead compared to NASA. The first satellite in space, the first man in space, the first EVA walk,.. And then came 1969 and the first man on the moon made by NASA. Having lost the race to the moon in that year Soviets actively focused their attention on sending a mission to Mars. Their Mars program already existed since 1960 but had been unsuccessful. That changed on December 2nd, 1971.

Intro:

On my last review I have shown and reviewed one very unusual watch bought for my wife. Well, my wife is not the only one in our family which owns an unusual watch. The other person is - of course - me. :) The very unusual diver watch which I want to present you today is the Deep Diver Tachymeter watch from Zeno-Watch Basel Company (shortened as Zeno further on).

I must admit that I am a lucky guy. Married for thirty years with the same wife, and this wife never complains about my crazy passion over the watches. She even often collects the packages from different delivery services bringing me new watches over and over. Well, I decided quite while ago, that in thanks she deserves one special watch. And when Alexander Shorokhoff (AS) announced the launch of a new lady's model, called Shar, I have carefully shown her the announcement. She was quite interested in two out of four models, which were presented. At the end the final decision was to preorder the watch shown on the picture on the right. As usual, I preordered the watch in Poljot24.de shop owned by Julian Kampmann.

Every year between Black Friday and New Year I check all important web shops to see if there are any interesting watches on sale - without any pressure that I have to buy something. This year a Revue Thommen Airspeed XL chronograph pop out. And I decided to buy one.

Let us go back to Mid January 2022... I just received weekly news from Molnija with the announcement that the new watch - model Tank with 3603 movement - is available for a preorder. 

This year Poljot International group celebrates 30th anniversary. If you are not familiar with this group - just a VERY SHORT history.  The company was established on a roots of USSR Poljot German branch office by Alexander Shorokhoff. The first brand was Poljot International, followed by Basilika and then Alexander Shorokhoff. Brand Basilika was abandoned few years ago but a name stayed active as a product line inside the Poljot International brand.

Do you remember my review of the Raketa Space Launcher review? You can read it here again:

Alexander Shorokhoff is among my favorite's watch brand so it is not a surprise, that AS watches are regular guests in my reviews. For the moment beside the one I am going to present today, another one is still in the waiting list waiting for my free time to review it... 

The history of mechanical alarm wrist watches is quite interesting and extensive. First true alarm wrist watch was developed by Vulcain in early 1940's, until today more than 50 different movements were developed and almost every serious watch company issued at least one of the model with alarm complication (but the fact is that only few of them developed it's own movement, they mainly used one of the "standard" movements). So it is a bit unusual fact that despite all of the variety of the mechanical alarms, only two companies developed chronograph movement with alarm function - Fortis and Zenith. What is even more surprisingly is the fact that no other company tried to launch a chronograph alarm watch which would use Fortis or Zenith movement. And that is not the end of the surprises. First alarm chronograph was developed very late, namely the first alarm chronograph was developed for Fortis by Paul Gerber after the Russian space agency ordered such a chronograph only in 1995!

Almost exactly three years ago I reviewed Alexander Shorokhoff (AS) first alarm watch, called Tschaikovsky, which used Poljot 2612.1 movement. At that time the review was published only on our local watch forum, so one month ago I rearranged that review also for my web page. If you missed that review, I suggest you to read it before you continue reading this review here:

Today, I would like to share with you my first (and second and ...) impression of the watch which is quite unusual member of my collection. It does not fit to any of the categories to which I pay attention to, but yet it attracted me. I am talking about World watch V7 made by YES company.

In the last two months I added two "modern" German watches which both uses Poljot 2612.1 alarm movement. I decided to compare those two watches and on the same time use this opportunity to write something about the history of Poljot 2612.1 movement.