Avi-8 Unveil Flyboy Falklands 40 Limited Edition in Collaboration with the Royal British Legion

The autumn season has a special importance in honouring the brave efforts of soldiers and military personnel in past and present conflicts. Last year the military-themed watch specialists Avi-8 worked with the Royal British Legion on a pair of special edition watches designed around Remembrance Day and that collaboration has continued in 2022 with the launch of another limited edition timepiece. The new watch is called the Avi-8 Flyboy Royal British Legion Falklands 40 Meca-Quartz Limited Edition AV-4099, which is perhaps the longest name of any watch this year.

It has a 40mm diameter stainless steel case with an oversize crown and a unidirectional rotating bezel with aluminium insert. There are seven different colourways available and two of them have brass coloured finishes and two others have black finishing, giving those editions vintage and stealthy aesthetics respectively.

The specific colourways include dials that are black, grey, red, blue, green and white. The darker colours feel like traditional pilots watches while the more colourful ones add rich flavour to the design. My personal favourite is the ref. AV-4099-01, known as the Lewin, which is arguably the most traditional of them all with a black dial, steel case and numerals coated in vintage beige lume.

As with the previous Royal British Legion editions, the famous poppy symbol can be found on the watch’s seconds hand and emblazoned on the crown. The RBL logo can also be found on the caseback. Something unique to the 2022 edition is the string of numbers between the central inscription on the dial and the minute and hour scales. Those numbers are the longitude and latitude of the Falkland Islands, a tribute to the historic war’s 40th anniversary, which is also why the watch’s name includes ‘Falklands 40’.

Beneath the commemorative caseback is the Seiko M-SII-VH31-HL meca-quartz calibre. In some watch circles, quartz is a bit of a dirty word, it lacks the finesse and artisanal engineering of a genuine automatic movement and meca-quartz is a way to make quartz less controversial. It’s still powered by a battery but the motion of the hands is more in line with what you’d expect from a mechanical piece.

It also means the Avi-8 Flyboy Royal British Legion Falklands 40 Meca-Quartz Limited Edition AV-4099 can be priced at £210 instead of £2,100. That kind of accessibility makes a lot of sense, especially as it’s for a charitable cause close to people’s hearts.