Chaika 3050 KR

Description

The first russian quartz movement with analog time display, the Chaika 3050 KR, was made in a cooperation of several russian manfacturers (each of them provided different parts/modules) between 1977 (first series; the mass production started in 1978) and around 1983.

Compared to the later launched Luch 3055, which only had a quartz controlled balance, it was technically far advanced.

Technically, with its four-coil stepper motor, which makes only a 45° turn per second, it reminds of the first generation of swiss quarzu movements with stepper motor, such as e.g. the ESA 9180, which means also, that when it came on the market in 1977, it was already technically obsolete, since the far more modern swiss and japanese quartz movements such as the ESA 9361 use the Lavet stepper motor with a 180° turn per second. This type of stepper motor is used until today in virtually every analog quartz movement.

A disassembly of the gear train can’t be provided here, since the very fragile coils and rotors of the motors would not have survived it, which would have been a pity.

However, you can see, that the motor drives a reduction wheel, before the center seconds wheel comes into place, followed by third wheel and center minute wheel.

By pulling the crown, the movement is hacked mechanically by blocking the center seconds wheel.

The electonics module offers no surprises.

Whether the light blue markings were a kind of quality control or had another purpose, is unknown, unfortunately.

The very large quartz resonator reminds of the first days of swiss quartz movements; in 1977 these monsters where obsoleted by much smaller tuning-fork-shaped quartz oscillators.

It’s nice, that the Chaika 3050 KR uses a trimmer capacitor, which can regulate the freqency of the 32kHz quartz oscillator.

On the dial side, much was used from Raketa (or vice versa?), you find the yoke winding system with identical setting lever spring and also the same calendar mechanism, which differs only in tiny details.

The fact, that three conventional jewels (with hole!) are used to bear the date ring, is quite funny, since there’s no real technical need for this, but you can advertize 3 more jewels.

The calendar switching wheel with its pin to drive the date ring and its raised flap to drive the weekday disc is functionally identical to that of Raketa, but quite different in its execution.

The moveable can on its lower side tenses the wheel over the whole day, so that it can immideately discarge on midnight and advance both indicators, day and weekday. At least that’s the theory, in pratice, the jump of both start at midnight, but terminate only at 1 o’clock. Maybe, there’s some friction more, as expected.

On the middle crown position, the five-star wheel at 3 o’clock engages with the date ring and can drive it forth and back by turning the crown. For the weekday disc however, there’s no quickset mechanism available at all.

The nine-star wheel at 12 o’clock drives the weekday disc back and forth by turning the hands.

Although the weekday disc has got 14 positions, it is mono-linguistic.

Technical data

Usage gallery