TiggerToo
Well-Known Member
Where is the best place to start reading about Sat Phones, what they have to offer, what the costs are, the options etc....
Assume a complete numptie/newbie
Assume a complete numptie/newbie
sat phones
- Thread starter TiggerToo
- Start date
jamie N
Well-Known Member
RJJ
Well-Known Member
Mail-a-sail site isn't too bad
Most of the sellers over-complicate matters.
For a basic (budget) emergency and weather setup, you probably choose Iridium over other networks - for cost, choice of kit, and global coverage. I assume that's what you want.
Then you need an Iridium handset or GO. Handsets basically all do the same thing but you need an external device (a wifi optimiser) to read data to your laptop; the optimiser connects to the satphone via a cable and then transmits WiFi.. GO is a built-in optimiser and wifi without a handset; you use your smartphone or tablet. Effect is much the same; GO is marginally more convenient for receiving data, a handset has advantages if it comes to emergency calls. Both the optimiser and GO help you block out background PC activity which soaks up bandwidth - expensive and slow, bearing in mind speed is comparable to early 90s dial-up.
Then you need airtime.
Then you need an antenna. For sure a fixed antenna can enhance your reception, but we used a cheap "puck" antenna resting in the companionway, it got us across Biscay and Atlantic no problems at all.
Then you need some form of subscription to a remote Mail software.
coopec
N/A
I'm on the same learning curve as you. I looked at it about a year ago and decided Iridium was the way to go but it depends.....
You could look at this article
Best Internet Options for Boats | SatelliteInternet.com
It's all coming back to me now - I looked at this video clip and found it quite helpful.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=yacht+communications+at+sea+internet+vs+satphone
You could look at this article
Best Internet Options for Boats | SatelliteInternet.com
It's all coming back to me now - I looked at this video clip and found it quite helpful.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=yacht+communications+at+sea+internet+vs+satphone
Iliade
Well-Known Member
Have you considered Garmin InReach, yellowbrick or SPOT as these offer some of the functionality of a sat phone at much lower cost?
geem
Well-Known Member
We know several cruisers that have sold the satphone and use a Garmin Inreach. We have had an Inreach since 2014. Far cheaper to operate. Text only but all done on phone or tablet via Bluetooth
jdc
Well-Known Member
Another vote for Iridium and Mailasail as supplier of hardware, provisioner of air-time and other services.
What we use the satellite link for:
1. emails to family and friends, and occasionally to request entry to national waters or give a report of expected arrival. This depends on where you are going, but it was mandatory for Iceland when we went, and is for Greenland also. The mainsail email server works well as it can be set up to avoid sending you anything but plain text, and it won't download attachments without asking first. This is important as most people are sloppy and send emails with 100's of kilobytes when 200 bytes would do, which risks clogging your inbox so you never get the one or two you actually want! At speeds slower than the old dial-up (~2.4kBaud) you will really appreciate this!
2. Fetching grib files for viewing on a computer. We used the zygrib viewer (was xygrib iirc) but I'm sure there are others. The grib files can be got from the mailasail reflector rather easily, and you can specify area, number of hours ahead and which parameters you are interested in (usually wind speed and direction at 10m, pressure at sea level and occasionally CAPE). You can also get ocean forecasts and nav warnings as text files from the same reflector.
3. Keeping a blog for family and friends (and you may be surprised after the event to find how many colleagues or friends follow it). It's really good if you can simply send an email and the software takes care of making it look ok, adding dates and putting it on the global map etc. I'm not a great fan of free software and hate Wordpress for its complexity. Our blog here (don't judge it by my purple prose, but take a look at the overall blog.mailasail site).
4. In principle, not that we've had to, talk to someone in, say, a medical emergency.
For all these I think a computer connected to a phone or plain modem is best. But there's a complication, at least with Apple Macs; you can't disable the damn thing from trying to synchronise and do software updates etc and steal all the bandwidth, so it simply doesn't work if connected directly to the Iridium phone or modem. What you have to do is put a router and packet filter between the two. We use a 'red box'. Alternatively, use an old windows laptop or one running linux and the most old-fashioned mail program you can find and disable any auto-updates.
Since you're at Falmouth I believe, I can show you our set up.
What we use the satellite link for:
1. emails to family and friends, and occasionally to request entry to national waters or give a report of expected arrival. This depends on where you are going, but it was mandatory for Iceland when we went, and is for Greenland also. The mainsail email server works well as it can be set up to avoid sending you anything but plain text, and it won't download attachments without asking first. This is important as most people are sloppy and send emails with 100's of kilobytes when 200 bytes would do, which risks clogging your inbox so you never get the one or two you actually want! At speeds slower than the old dial-up (~2.4kBaud) you will really appreciate this!
2. Fetching grib files for viewing on a computer. We used the zygrib viewer (was xygrib iirc) but I'm sure there are others. The grib files can be got from the mailasail reflector rather easily, and you can specify area, number of hours ahead and which parameters you are interested in (usually wind speed and direction at 10m, pressure at sea level and occasionally CAPE). You can also get ocean forecasts and nav warnings as text files from the same reflector.
3. Keeping a blog for family and friends (and you may be surprised after the event to find how many colleagues or friends follow it). It's really good if you can simply send an email and the software takes care of making it look ok, adding dates and putting it on the global map etc. I'm not a great fan of free software and hate Wordpress for its complexity. Our blog here (don't judge it by my purple prose, but take a look at the overall blog.mailasail site).
4. In principle, not that we've had to, talk to someone in, say, a medical emergency.
For all these I think a computer connected to a phone or plain modem is best. But there's a complication, at least with Apple Macs; you can't disable the damn thing from trying to synchronise and do software updates etc and steal all the bandwidth, so it simply doesn't work if connected directly to the Iridium phone or modem. What you have to do is put a router and packet filter between the two. We use a 'red box'. Alternatively, use an old windows laptop or one running linux and the most old-fashioned mail program you can find and disable any auto-updates.
Since you're at Falmouth I believe, I can show you our set up.
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roaringgirl
Well-Known Member
The massive differences between an iridium phone and an Iridium GO are that the GO has resumable downloads, and it allows you to control 'big' emails without downloading them.
Trying to download forecasts across the atlantic on the iridium phone was a nightmare and actually resulted in us not receiving a weather warning until *after* the resulting knockdown.
There's so much wasted time and money on emails that fail to fully download before the connection is dropped - the phone system will throw away the partial download, the GO will hold onto it and resume when it reconnects. With the phone, any large email sitting in your inbox cripples you as you can't remove it yourself and you can't keep a connection open long enough to download it in one single attempt. With the GO you can allow it to download over multiple attempts, tell it not to auto- download mails over a certain size and then browse and choose to discard any that are too big, or hold them until later.
These 2 things have meant that we've ditched our iridium phone for a GO. We've made 2 phone calls on the GO across the pacific, they were no worse than iridium phone calls we've made in the past.
If I can't convince you NOT to buy an iridium phone, then buy ours, as I don't want it! I also have the red-box thing you can have too!
Trying to download forecasts across the atlantic on the iridium phone was a nightmare and actually resulted in us not receiving a weather warning until *after* the resulting knockdown.
There's so much wasted time and money on emails that fail to fully download before the connection is dropped - the phone system will throw away the partial download, the GO will hold onto it and resume when it reconnects. With the phone, any large email sitting in your inbox cripples you as you can't remove it yourself and you can't keep a connection open long enough to download it in one single attempt. With the GO you can allow it to download over multiple attempts, tell it not to auto- download mails over a certain size and then browse and choose to discard any that are too big, or hold them until later.
These 2 things have meant that we've ditched our iridium phone for a GO. We've made 2 phone calls on the GO across the pacific, they were no worse than iridium phone calls we've made in the past.
If I can't convince you NOT to buy an iridium phone, then buy ours, as I don't want it! I also have the red-box thing you can have too!
jdc
Well-Known Member
I've no objection to the use of a 'Go', but I think you may not have set up the Iridium phone system that well. We had absolutely no issues at all with emails, downloading only the text parts. The kind of set up RG describes is exactly the service we got from Mailasail.
roaringgirl
Well-Known Member
I need the attachments of emails to get grib files!
roaringgirl
Well-Known Member
buy my satphone!
jdc
Well-Known Member
And these came through without trouble from the mailasail reflector. We used the phone as the modem for nearly 10 years and didn't experience any problems using it for email, but that's not to say our system is best.
roaringgirl
Well-Known Member
Mailasail 'reflector' didn't work for me - i tried numerous different instructions, but could never get the grib I wanted despite following their instructions carefully (I am a software engineer), so reverted to the public one (is that saildocs, I can't remember now?).
GO is significantly cheaper for a limitless amount of data and can simply be left retrying until email is recieved in full. I have iridium satphone (now unused, and did I mention, *for sale*), GO and Inreach. If I could only have one, it would be the GO (with predictwind contract).
GO is significantly cheaper for a limitless amount of data and can simply be left retrying until email is recieved in full. I have iridium satphone (now unused, and did I mention, *for sale*), GO and Inreach. If I could only have one, it would be the GO (with predictwind contract).
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