Date Command

[Planet-LED]

I have a Date Command that will light up bright when either of the time or date demand switches are pressed, but it will then get dim and loose about %50 of its brightness. At other times, it will be dim as soon as the demand buttons are pushed. It makes no difference if it is the time or date demand button that is pushed.

I have checked all of the obvious places looking for signs of a bad connection. Has anyone on the board had a similar experience?

[bruce wegmann]

I have seen this once, in a Dress model. An additional peculiarity was if the the time button was pressed and released immediately [so as not to go into running seconds], the watch would sometimes go into setting mode. Sort of suggests some problem with the reed switch [it would, after all, have to "bounce" and make three rapid contacts to get into set mode]. Finally, the bright-dim problem was restricted to the time button only; the date worked just fine. And here's the cruncher; I removed this module to put it into a nicer case, and the problem disappeared! To this day, I have no certain idea why, but I still suspect the reed switch. If it starts again in the new case, I will probably replace the switch...

[Planet-LED]

I ended up replacing both reed switches to resolve the problem. The watch is now working properly.

[bruce wegmann]

Not sure whether to claim this as a successful diagnosis or not. Glad I was able to point you in the right direction, at least. Were you able to specifically associate the problem with one switch or the other? Also, did you use new or vintage switches for the repair?

[Planet-LED]

Bruce,
I used new reed switches. I put a new switch into the time demand side first, and that resolved the problem on the time side, but I still had the same problem on the date demand side. I then changed that reed switch, and it has been running good all day.

What are the chances of this happening statistically? Who knows, but it still happened. More importantly, it resolved the problem. Thanks for your input.