Sinn Instrument Watches

Sinn's Instrument Watches are the Frankfurt brand's pilot's watches and mission timers without a chronograph. Helmut Sinn, a flight instructor and Luftwaffe pilot, founded the company in Frankfurt am Main in 1961 to make navigation cockpit clocks and pilot's chronographs.

The 104 takes the case, bezel and hands of the 103 pilot's chronograph and runs on the automatic Sellita SW 220-1, with day and date at 3 o'clock. It is 41 mm across and takes a 20 mm strap. The bezel is a 60-minute countdown that ratchets both ways: set the 30 against the minute hand and time is up when the hand reaches the 12 o'clock pip. The 104 St Sa A adds Arabic numerals to the dial. The 556 is the smaller 38.5 mm pilot's watch, with a white mother-of-pearl version and a grey-dial Anniversary edition of 1,000.

The 856 UTC shows Sinn's own technology. Tegiment hardening gives its case a surface of about 1,200 Vickers, against roughly 220 for untreated steel, and Ar-Dehumidifying adds a copper sulphate drying capsule that turns blue when it needs replacing. It runs an ETA 2893-2 and adds a yellow-tipped GMT hand on an inner 24-hour scale. The 43 mm 857 UTC is one of the models Sinn certified to TESTAF, the standard for professional pilot's watches it developed with the aerospace technology faculty of Aachen University of Applied Sciences; the TESTAF LH Cargo edition is limited to 777 pieces.

EZM stands for Einsatzzeitmesser, German for mission timer. The line began with the EZM 1, first shown in 1997 and developed for a special unit of German customs, and each EZM is built around a single purpose. The 44 mm EZM 9 TESTAF has a bead-blasted, Tegiment-hardened case, a captive bezel and a Sellita SW 200 automatic; the EZM 3F puts a pilot's countdown bezel on the EZM 3. Beside them sit the cushion-cased 240, three-hand sibling of the 140, the 47 mm 212 KSK with a compass bezel in a run of 300, and the 43 mm 836.