Pilot John Reisman invented Flight Watch on July 7, 1992 - a beautiful day, perfect weather to go flying...

It began on the tarmac at Van Nuys airport when Reisman was preparing for his first long cross-country flight. Reisman was walking out to his plane and looked at the egg timer in his hand - and thinking, this thing isn't going to cut it (pilots use egg timers to keep track of tasks like time to fix & switching fuel tanks).

They say all pilots start out with a bag full of luck and no experience. The trick is to gain enough experience to keep you alive before your bag of luck runs out. This is as true a statement as can be. If the luck runs out before you get enough experience under your belt, it's game over.

When he landed at Paso Robles with minimum fuel on board, knowing that he may have had to crash land in the mountains had he not made certain critical decisions, Reisman realized that a better flight timer could save lives and make flying safer - Flight Watch was born. That flight began his quest, and now, 13 years later, Flight Watch has arrived.

 

After landing back at VNY (Van Nuys Airport) Reisman still had thoughts floating around in his head... the seed of an idea for a better flight timer. First, it had to have a vibrator, just like the ones they used in pagers. Pilots rarely hear their egg timer alarm because of the cockpit noise, so this was most important.

Having survived the first long cross-country flight Reisman compiled all he had learned and started to apply it to the flight timer idea. Originally he thought about just putting a pager motor in an egg timer and strap it on with Velcro. It actually took a little longer to conceive that it would make an amazing watch!

Reisman thought of all the things he wanted to track in flight and wrote them down, and that was the beginning of Flight Watch.

Note: Reisman called Namiki Corp. in the early 90's to ask if they could make a vibrator small enough to fit in a wristwatch. They began working on it. They eventually completed their work, but Reisman, still with no backing watched as others began to use the technology he had been pushing for, and had already included in his patent for Flight Watch.