The H-50 is an interesting movement for me. I wanted a Hamilton, a field watch and a hand-wound movement, so the Hamilton Field Mechanical was an easy choice for me. I also wanted a NATO strap for a watch and the Field Mechanical came with a NATO strap so the choice was easy.

The H-50 is an ETA C07.701, I am trying to work out if there are any differences between a standard ETA movement and the Hamilton version. As Hamilton is a Swatch Group brand, ETA is a movement manufacturer within the Swatch Group, so it is an in-house movement [of sorts]. When I purchased my Hamilton Field Mechanical, a very large factor in the purchase was the hand-wound movement.

The H-50 runs at 21,600 vph [3 Hz] and has an 80 hour power reserve and has 17 jewels. I really like the no-date version, clean dial and I can never read the date anyway. The H-50 is a workhorse type movement, not fancy by any measure, there is no finishing as this is a) a field watch and b) there is no display caseback. The advantage of a hand-wound movement is a thinner movement than a similar sized [diameter] automatic movement, this offers designers a thinner case.

So I needed to look deeper into the ETA C07.701, this is built on the framework of the ETA 2801-2, this base ETA movement had a frequency of 28,800 vph [4 Hz] and a power reserve of 42 hours. This is a hand-would three hand movement with no date, one could argue a date is important in a military watch, one could be on patrol for a number of days [or weeks], so tracking dates could be important.