A perpetual calendar is often regarded as one of the top complications for makers of mechanicalย watches. They are notoriously difficult to engineer and produce. The high cost to own one of these geared marvels puts it out of reach for many collectors. However, there are quartz-powered calendar watches that can give the wearer a small taste of what owningย a high-end perpetual calendar watch would be like. Victorinox Swiss Army made one such watch and they called it the Swiss Army Odyssey VIP Calendar withย Moon Phase. With a name like that, you know it has to be interesting, right?
Swiss Army Odyssey VIP
Maybe you have never heard of a calendar watch, so perhaps “the basics” would be a good place to start. The simplest form of a wristwatch will have centrally-placed hands that tell the hour and minute of the day. Duh, we have all seen this. Some watchesย have the addition of a seconds hand, which can also appear on the central axis or it can beย separated on a subdial. The hour, minute and seconds hands deal with time in two 12-hour cycles from 12:00 a.m. midnight to 12:00 p.m. noon, and then back from noon to midnight. Two rotations of the hour hand complete a full day. This is all self-evident, but I wanted to start at the bottom of the complexity ladder and then add complications. This would be like ordering a pizza with just sauce and cheese, and the additional complications would be like the toppings you add. haha
Dressing down the Odyssey VIP with a NATO
The next common complication that is added to watches has to do with the date. Usually, a window cut into the dial reveals a numbered disk that corresponds to the day of the month, but the Odyssey VIP has a subdial. Because some months have less than 31 days, the wearer will have to adjust the date at the end of each shorter month. A related complication is the day-of-the-week that also shows through a window (or again on a subdial here). These also work by having the days of the week printed on a disk that rotates under the dial. These day-of-weekย disks can even multilingually showย the day in languages matched to the geographic area where the watch is sold. These complications are still fairly basic, and I congratulate you if you made it this far. I promise, things are about to get more interesting… like when your buddy orders anchovies on your pizza when you are washing up in the restroom!
The Odyssey VIP has a complex, but orderly dial
There are several other time-related variables that can be tracked by a wristwatch, and they might seem esoteric. Remember, this style of watch is supposed to give the wearer a complete overview of how “today’s date” fits into the rest of the year. This is why the week-of-the-year and month dual complication is included. This information appears on a rehaut beyond the Arabicย numerals. A 12-month track and a 52-week track are stacked in close proximity. You might be able to see that the markings do not exactly line up cleanly. That’s because 52 weeks does not split into nice whole numbers when divided by 12, and the result is about 4.33 weeks in every month. As wonky as this sounds, the calendar complication is easy to use. Simply locate the red arrow-tipped hand, and see where it lines up to the markings on the dial. Every week, after a complete Monday through Sunday has completed, this special arrow hand will jump ahead one spot. Technically, it might be more accurate to say jump backward one spot since the scales of the weeks and months runs counter-clockwise. Because you are reading the scale and not the location of the hand in relation to the dial, there should not really be much confusion. However, I cannot think of another watch that has a hand that moves counter-clockwise, so this is a bit of a unique situation.
Swiss Army Odyssey VIP
Voyage to the Moon from 1902 video
The last complication of the Victorinox Swiss Army Odyssey VIP Calendar is the moon phase. As the name suggests, this keeps track of whether the moon is waxing, waning or completely full. It’s a romantic and charming feature that adds some whimsy to the dial. Any time I see a moon phase on a watch, I am reminded of that old 1902 black and white silent film (Le Voyage Dans la Lun (aka A Trip to the Moon by Georges Mรฉliรจs) where a rocket ship lands in the eye of theย man-on-the-moon! Watchmakers can showcase their artistry by rendering the moon disk from a miniature detailed carving in precious metal to simple metal disks. The Odyssey VIP’s moon phase artwork is simpler still. The moon appears as a silver printed circle on a field of 5-pointed stars.
The gull-wing shape of the moon phase window is what makes the complication work. When the moon disk is centered in the middle of the window, the moon appears full. As the moon disk rotates, the specially-shaped window starts to obscure the edges of the full moon. Much like the Earth’s shadow hides the edges of the moon when it is waxing or waning. The complete cycle takes about 29.5 days and is related to our calendar months, which are also roughly 30 days… give or take a few days here and there.
The Odyssey VIP on a vintage Swiss Army strap
The Swiss Army Odyssey VIP Calendar is not a perpetual calendar like the top watchmakers create. Those high-end watches take into account the month, day, hour, minute, seconds, the number of days in a month, leap years, exact moon phase positions, a.m., p.m. and probably something that I have forgotten to include like the position of stars (not kidding!). Real perpetual calendar watches are the dreams of watchmakers, and an affordable quartz watch like the Odyssey VIP should not be compared to them. To be clear, these products are in different universes as far as what they offer. By the way, the Odyssey VIP is powered by a Swiss Ronda 706B, 5-jewel quartz caliber.
A view of the month and week rehaute
There are several advantages that the Swiss Army Odyssey VIP Calendar has over real perpetual calendar watches. First, they are within the reach of most collectors. Though they do not come up for auction that often, they are available if you are patient. They will not break your piggy bank either. Quartz calendar watches are also well-sized compared to their mechanical counterparts that tend to be hefty wrist weights because of all the gears required to do their calendar magic. The Swiss Army Odyssey VIP is only 43.5 mm wide including the crown, 49 mm lug-to-lug and 13 mm high. This is a great size for many people.
A manageable size on the wrist
Swiss Army Odyssey VIP profile
The Swiss Army Odyssey VIP is easier to own than an actual mechanical perpetual calendar which needs to stay on a winder to keep all of the functions synced correctly. If your mechanical perpetual calendar watch runs down, then you could be in for an annoying process to reset all of the variables. Lord help you if you accidentally go past a current date when setting it. I’ve heard that some of the mechanical perpetual calendar watches do not really go backward so be careful. The best you can do is let it run down again and reset it later.
Observers might mistake the Odyssey VIP for a chronograph
Setting the Swiss Army Odyssey VIP Calendarย has a process to be sure, but it’s not too bad. You set the hour, minute by pulling the crown out to the first position and rotating the crown. The pushers seen adjacent to the crown do not operate a chronograph, which is what some people might suspect when glancing at this watch. Instead, they each independently move the day-of-the-week and week-of-the-year settings. Each push movesย each setting forward one step. The moon phase is set with the aid of a lookup table showing when a full moon is in relation to the date. In practically no time, you will have the watch set and ready to enjoy. The only instance you will have to adjust it in the future is when a month does not have 31 days.
The pushers control the day and week settings
Now that you know what the watch does, I would like to discuss the aesthetics. Admittedly, the Swiss Army Odyssey VIP’s dial has a lot of information displayed on it, but I would argue that the designers made it in such a way that the most used information is seen first. This would be the hours and minutes, which are marked with the bold two-part sword hands that are hallmarks of the Odyssey family of watches. The second’s hand is polished steel, and is visible as light reflects off of it, and almost invisible when reflecting a dark surrounding environment. The day and date are confined to subdials as another layer of commonly accessed info. Finally, the rehaute subtly displays the information that is accessed the least, which would be the month and week-of-the-year. If you don’t know this, then you might have just awoken from a coma or are not very observant. A confession… it has happened to me (the not very observant part).
The Odyssey VIP has a polished bezel and a brushed case
There is not much more to say about this watch except my specimen has seen some duty. It has scratches and the crystal’s anti-reflective coating is not perfect. The original owner told me that heย found it in Cabela’s Bargain Cave in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin and he had owned it for at least 10 years. I think watches like this should be left as-is. They are survivors of actual wrist time and each scuff tells a story. I think that a well-worn watch has charm (aka wabi-sabi).
The Odyssey VIP can still be read easily in the shadows
This is a vintage Swiss Army watch as you can see by the SWISS ARMY-without-Victorinox logo and T SWISS MADE T on the dia indicating tritium was used. That lume agent was later replaced with Luminova. To make this Odyssey VIP my own, I removed the original rubberized watch strap that was designed that there was no space between the lugs and the case. These straps can become gooey and brittle so it is best to replace them or risk losing the watch. I decided that a NATO strap or 2-piece vintage Swiss Army strap suited my casual style. This watch could look a little dressy under the right circumstances.
The Odyssey VIP can be dressed up or worn more casually
There was a related, yet thematically different calendar watch named the Swiss Army Odyssey Calendar (seen below).ย The design of this watch was similar in layout but bolder in execution. Where the Odyssey VIP strove for a subtle (dressy?) approach with black, red and silver details, the Swiss Army Odyssey Calendarย takes on an alpha dog persona with pilot-style sword hands, a golden moon on a field of blue, larger subdials for the date and day. The second’s hand is a white-tipped for improved visibility as is the month hand, which is more noticeable than the red version of the Odyssey VIP. Even the months are completely spelled out on the rehaute instead of being abbreviated. These changes create an exciting dial, but maybe one less nuanced in its hierarchal order of displaying information. All the data is seen at once. The image below shows the form-fitting bracelet too.
Swiss Army Odyssey Calendar. Photo: eBay
If you are dabbling with the idea of owning a perpetual calendar watch, then theย Swiss Army Odyssey VIP Calendar withย Moon Phase ย (v.24348)ย or the Swiss Army Odyssey Calendar withย Moon Phase (v.24349)ย might be good places to start to see if this type of watch is more than an infatuation. These somewhat rare watches from the 2000s are worth grabbing if you ever see one. Be aware that many of these vintage watches might have tired movements. It would be prudent to check all the calendar functions to make sure the circuits and motors are still working. Good luck!
I find my Odyssey VIP to be a charming survior from the turn of the century
