Audemars Piguet - Performance of the AP Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar?

There’s been
quite a few posts recently from fellow PuristS with their Audemars
Piguet Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar, like fastback1967 (Please
click here); and dr.kol (Please
click here); and ciaca (Please
click here); and another openworked PC from urinosuke (Please
click here). It’s great to see these AP’s and with
the recent change to March 1st, I’m curious to compare my RO Perpetual
Calender’s performance with others. Over the past few years
I’ve been posting my experiences with the date change and my AP has done
extremely well. My watch has changed over to the 1st at
midnight. So has everyone experience the same
thing? Or is there a delay in the perpetual calendar
mechanism where it changes over a few hours later? Please share your
thoughts and experiences in this post.

For me I was
expecting the same performance as before. My AP RO 25829ST is
an openworked perpetual calendar that I wear almost daily.
Here’s a pic on February 28th from my office right before lunch
time.

When my AP is off my wrist it spends time in the
watch winder. It was a unusual day in Southern California on
Saturday where it was raining heavily during the weekend. So I
stayed at home while my AP is getting ready for the date
change. Here’s a pic in the AP watch winder.

I made a quick setup on my coffee table while
watching TV. The Royal Oak book and a micro fiber cleaning
cloth for a simple photo shoot. By 9:45pm the subdial with the
date has already started moving and transitioned over to the
29th.

My goal was to take a picture at 15 minute or so
intervals. To be honest I was binge watching the new season 3
episodes of ‘House of Cards’ on NetFlix, so sometimes it was every 20
minutes LOL.

By 10:23pm the date kept moving closer and had
already changed to the 30th. I compared this to my post from
last year and my watch was very consistent with
this.

At 10:45pm the date barely
moved. The other subdials remained the same showing Saturday
and February.

And similar to last year things start to happen on
the other subdials when I past 11:00pm.

One interesting thing was that the moon display at the 6
o’clock subdial was almost at full moon. Last year my watch
was showing mostly stars and a dark night.

Around 11:45pm the day subdial started transition
over to Sunday while the date was a hair past the
31st.

From past experience a lot more happens within ten
minutes to midnight.

As usual for my watch, the month was still showing February
but I was not worried because I was very confident that it would move
over at midnight.

Getting closer….
I like having the watch on my wrist and seeing the
changeover to March 1st. This year I almost missed it because
I was looking at the movement from the transparent caseback.
IMO the dial looks great from the front but the view of the skeletonized
2120/2802 movement is really stunning.

I think next year I’ll have to get a go-pro and do
a time lapsed video to show the changeover. But maybe not
because I really enjoy having my AP on my wrist to see the calendar
change.