Update: The Aero Clock Runs!!
The clock comes with kind of a "flour" sack to fill with weight, they suggest 4.4 lbs of sand or salt. I did not really want anything that could absorb moisture. Some on the reviews I read have used a big economy jar of bb gun bb's. The bb's I have on hand are not economy grade, so I would rather shoot them
Just as a test I put the weight from one of my kitchen clocks on and the Aero Clock began to tick! I noticed the tick tock sounded rather faint, so I weighed the kitchen clock weight and it's only 2.7 lbs. I added a stack of magnets and half a tin of airgun pellets and my tick-tock sounded strong. This new weight ended up at 3.5 lbs(still well below factory spec) and you can see from the photo I have both pendulum bobs adjusted near max to slow the clock. I feel quite sure If I go up to the recommended 4.4 lbs the clock would run faster than the stock pendulum could regulate, so it seems my pencil graphite burnish is indeed much lower drag than the candle wax most people use and is included in the kit.
If I find later that I want to go up to the 4.4 lb weight and the clock runs to fast, we are not stuck, if you glue a coin or similar small weight to the pendulum it will slow the clock more so you can fine tune with the factory adjustments.
I managed to get the balloon feature working as well, this was something many reviewers where stumped by...it is very fussy and the instructions are not clear but it's pretty neat when you get it working right. If someone gets an Aero Clock and wants tips on getting the balloon to work, I would be happy to write up a building tips list.
The balloon feature can be turned off and I am suspicious the clock will keep more accurate time with the feature turned off or perhaps if I go up to the recommended 4.4 lbs of drive weight I will have enough power in reserve the the balloon will not affect it but when I was running the clock on only 2.7 lb and turned on the balloon feature it slowed the clock by 1.5 seconds per min! That's a lot, but now as I type this I recall I did not have my balloon tuned properly so I will be much lower power consumption now.
I will get a better weight and let the clock run in for a couple weeks then see if I can get the time keeping regulated closely.
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And here is a photo with flash: my house is not well lighted.
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