Vostok Amphibia 110 Radio Room

I had a Vostok Amphibia 110 shaped hole in my collection of Russian watches and decided to fill it with a Vostok Amphibia 110 Radio Room, model 110650. This watch came from www.komandirskie.com.  The Vostok 110 case shape is large and angular with much more “square” features than some of the other Amphibia case shapes. It is close in size to the 090 tonneau case and quite a bit larger in size than the 710 “Ministry” cases. There is a picture below of the 110 alongside the 090 and 710 for comparison.

Vostok Amphibia 110 Radio Room

The 110 case diameter without the crown is 41mm across, it is 12 mm thick and has a lug width of 22mm. It comes with a metal strap with a polished centre band with a brushed / matt part either side of this which I think is particular to the 110. I, of course, took it off and swapped it for a red and black Nato strap, which seems to be one of the most popular straps for the Vostok Radio Room dial. I currently have the watch on a black leather strap from SecTime on Ebay which has a biker vibe (the seller describes it as “Harley Davidson Style”). The watch is fitted with Vostok’s self-winding, 31 jewel, 2416B movement and, with a screw-down crown and case back, is water resistant to 200m. It has the standard Vostok Amphibia hand set. The bezel again seems to be specific to the 110 and has red and black markings with 12 large notches.

The Vostok Radio Room Dial is primarily back with white markings and is distinguished by 4 red segments, more of which later. There is a date window at 3 o’clock, the numerals are arabic and white. On the dial there is the Cyrillic word for Amphibia, Aмфибия, below the 12 o’clock mark, 200m to the left of the date window, 31 jewels (in Cyrillic) and an anchor logo by the 5 o’clock mark.

Radio Room Watch Dial

I had seen the Vostok Radio Room around in its various configurations and it seems to be a firm favourite amongst Vostok cognescenti but I did not know the full story behind the dial. I vaguely knew the red flashes equated to four periods of radio silence so that any one in trouble at sea can send out distress calls. It would seem the disaster of the sinking of the RMS Titanic and the subsequent Radio Act of 1912 resulted in the peculiarites of the Vostok Radio Room dial. You can read the full Radio Act of 2012 here. The 2 main points of the act were that it mandated that all radio stations in the United States be licensed by the federal government and, which is more pertinent here, it also mandated that seagoing vessels (and coastal stations) continuously monitor distress frequencies. This effectively meant that all ocean going vessels would require 24 hour radio watches.

The clock dial in a ship’s Radio Rooms would originally have have 2 periods of three minutes marked as red sectors, one beginning at 3 o’clock and one at 9 o’clock, to designate a period of silence when only emergency radio messages could be transmitted. These two red sectors were for listening at a frequency of 500 kHz, the international calling and distress frequency for Morse code maritime communication. This frequency was later joined by the 2182 kHz distress frequency, the international distress frequency for voice maritime communication, and two more three minute period of silence were added to the clock face at 12  and 6 o’clock which were marked with green sectors.  You can read more about these clocks and frequencies here. They are still made today by Chelsea Clock. On the Vostok Radio Room dial all four 3 minute sectors are marked in red.

The Vostok Amphibia 110 case shape is not one of the Vostok case shapes I was immediately attracted to but it definitely grows on me. It looks a goos size on my 7 to 7 1/2 inch wrist. The Vostok Amphibia 090 tonneau case shape is one of my favourites and the 110 is about the same size, but I wasn’t sure about its angular design. The dial is striking, stands out, is quite different from most of the other Vostok designs and, of course, has a great story behind it. Pair it with a great strap and one has a really good looking watch. The Vostok Radio Room dial works well with any black or red straps and I reckon it would look good on brown leather too. I recommend picking up a Vostok Radio Room watch if only to bore people about the dial design when they ask. And they will, it’s a great talking point.