Yellow is the newest dial the rattrapante has been given and the one that makes least sense on paper. A split-seconds chronograph is a serious instrument and this one has a dial the color of a warning light, cut from aluminum alloy, in a grade 5 titanium case at 44 mm on a titanium bracelet. The watch is still catalogued. Everything that makes the titanium version the sensible choice is still here: it weighs a fraction of what the precious metal versions do, the movement itself is built in aluminum, and nothing on the case objects to being used. Two titanium dials are offered and this is the louder of them by a wide margin.
The dial is aluminum alloy rather than silver, which is what allows a color like this at all, since ruthenium and guilloche belong to metal surfaces and a flat anodized one takes pigment cleanly. Numerals are applied rather than printed and stand off the surface. The two chronograph counters are cut in engraved sapphire, so the eye passes through them into the mechanism instead of stopping at a painted circle, and against a bright ground those two openings are the only dark elements on the face. A very large date sits at six. The case is matte titanium at 44 mm and a shade over twelve deep, with a ceramic tachymeter bezel, rubber inserts through the caseband and bracelet and a rubber over-molded crown. Rubber through a titanium bracelet is a strange thing to specify and it is the detail that separates this generation of LineSport cases from the plain sports watches other houses build. The inserts sit between the links and around the crown, absorbing shock at the points where a hard knock would otherwise travel into the movement. They also make the bracelet quieter on the wrist, since metal does not touch metal at every joint. The ceramic in the bezel does the same job for the top surface. None of it is visible from more than an arm's length, which is the point.
What a rattrapante does is easily described and difficult to build. Two seconds hands sit one above the other and start together; pressing the pusher at four stops the upper one while the lower continues, which allows a lap or an intermediate time to be read off the dial; pressing it again sends the stopped hand flying forward to catch the one still running, and the two continue as one. Doing that without dragging on the going train is the whole problem, and it is why split-seconds chronographs are rare and generally reserved for a maker's most serious work. Here the chronograph is also monopusher, run entirely from the pusher at two, so the two controls have one function each and nothing overlaps. A split-seconds mechanism is also the reason this watch runs for as long as it does between winds. Holding one hand stationary while the other continues puts a load on the going train that a plain chronograph never applies, so the barrel has to carry more than it otherwise would, and Journe specified over eighty hours precisely so the rattrapante could still be used two days after the last wind. Thirty-eight turns of the crown fills it. The balance runs at three hertz with four adjustable weights and a free-sprung spring, which is the same arrangement the dress watches use.
Titanium is the version most people should buy and the one the collection was designed around. The movement in it is built from aluminum alloy rather than the rose gold used in the precious metal versions, which is a substitution nobody else makes and which takes the weight out of the middle of the watch rather than only off the outside. The trade is a movement that looks plainer through the sapphire back. Two titanium dials are now offered, anthracite and this yellow, and the yellow arrived later as the collection widened. Nothing about the mechanism differs between them, so the choice is purely a matter of how visible the watch should be. Aluminum is doing two jobs in this watch and it is worth separating them. The dial is aluminum because the material takes a flat pigmented finish that silver cannot, which is what makes a yellow or an anthracite dial possible at all. The movement is aluminum for an entirely different reason, which is mass, and the difference on the wrist against a gold example is not subtle. Very few makers would build a mechanism this complicated from a metal chosen for weight, and fewer still would then finish it to the same standard as the gold version, which Journe does. The result looks plainer and behaves identically.
The yellow dial will decide this watch for most people one way or the other and it is worth seeing in person before making that judgment, since aluminum absorbs light and photographs make the color look brighter than it is. What sits behind it is the best value in the collection: a split-seconds chronograph, hand wound, that runs beyond eighty hours off a full wind and can be worn without care. Against the gold and platinum versions it gives up presence and the gold movement and keeps everything else. As a current reference the obstacle is allocation. Anyone deciding between the two titanium dials should handle both, because the anthracite is the safer choice and the yellow is the more interesting one. Either way the titanium is the version to buy for use rather than for display, and the only real maintenance question is the rubber, which perishes with age and will eventually need replacing on any example that has been worn. The split function should be run through several cycles before purchase, and the catch should be clean.
