Tag: Blancpain Léman Chronograph Flyback


Blancpain Léman Chronograph Flyback

The Blancpain Leman Flyback Chronograph Mark was kind enough to provide another guest review, this time he was kind enough to share some thoughts on his Blancpain Flyback. It’s a story I’m sure you’ve all heard a million times. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy ends up with girls roommate. So here are the details on how I ended up with this Blancpain.
A watch buddy of mine (we’ll call him Ale-Alejandro) said he had
the perfect watch for me. Her name was Roadster, as in Cartier!
Wow, I was excited. I’d never seen a Roadster outside of pictures – “in the flesh” as it were.
I arrived at the agreed upon meeting point, and as I saw that
Roadster start to emerge from her leather bound home, a funny thing
happened. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted the exotic roommate.
Now mind you that I was taught, by watching Seinfeld, that your eyes
should never linger. “It’s like staring at the Sun, get a sense of it and move on”.

Well, I pulled a “George Costanza” – I was caught in a linger.
At this point, Ale-Alejandro was getting a little nervous, and
fidgeted around a bit. I could see from that lost look in his eye,
that the exotic beauty strapped around his wrist had a spell on him too.
“Oh this?”, he stammered. “I don’t really want to sell this”, Ale-Alejandro said.

“Good. Because I don’t want to buy it”. I exclaimed. “How about a
trade”? As I reached into the pocket of my mystery robe and whipped
out the girl I dated, but never brought home to Mom.
As Ale-Alejandro is at least ten years younger than your humble narrator,
I knew he’d be immediately smitten by her initial shiny, dazzling brilliance.

Well needless to say, the trade was made, and now we’re both happy.
In truth, the Roadster looked better on him anyway.

Here are my initial thoughts on this little treasure – Blancpain Léman Chronograph Flyback

The build quality is really amazing. Starting with the bracelet, which is
constructed of solid steel, and secured by screws. The bracelet model is
X-71. As you see from the pictures, the watch is not camera shy.
The dial is one of the nicest chronograph layouts I have seen. The fly back
feature, which I never really knew existed, works the following way:
The top chrono button behaves like a typical chrono button, it starts
and stops the chronograph. The bottom button however, behaves
differently. While the chrono is running, a press of the bottom
button, resets back to zero, and the chrono begins again. Of course
pressing the top button to stop, and bottom button resets and stops
like a normal chronograph.

The case is 38 mm, however the watch wears larger than that. Perhaps
it’s the wide band, and beveled bezel that gives it that larger
appearance. Also it’s fairly heavy. And the wearing comfort is amazing.
I know that It’s cliche, but I don’t even know I have it on.
The accuracy is within a second or two a day on my wrist.
It has zero time on the winder so far, which I suppose is a good thing.

Blancpain uses their in-house movement for the Leman Flyback –
the F185 Calibre chronograph movement, developed with
their famous movement Manufacture, Frederic Piguet.