SSB E-mail vs Iridium E-mail

[Guest]

I am keen to hear from people who use Iridium and SSB e-mail. I am trying to decide between Iridium and SSB for my communications system. It seems that the set up costs of a Sat phone are roughly £500 less than those of SSB. The monthly line rental for a sat phone roughly equates to the annual membership fee of SailMail. So the fifference is obviously free airtime albeit limited to ten minutes on Sailmail compared to $1.50/minute using sat phone.

Sat phone therefore is obviously more expensive after you have used the first 400 minutes of airtime. But is sailmail a total nightmare, do connections reguarly fail etc, compared to sat phone? I will be using it all over the world.

Many thanks

Will

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[DepSol]

Make sure your equipment is right and the Iridium will work fine any where. You must have a multi directional arial for it to work properly.

<hr width=100% size=1>Dom

2003 is going to be a good year for me

 

[Guest]

Post deleted by danfoley

 

[snowleopard]

cost isn't the only factor. having spent a season in the caribbean i wouldn't be without an ssb. as well as keeping in touch with your new friends there are the safety and security nets, the weather nets such as herb and david jones. the americans are much more into ssb than we are this side of the pond, perhaps because of their citizens band culture.

weather fax works well in most parts of the world and is a clincher for me.

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[iangrant]

Talk to Yachtcom.com they seem to be up to date with the "long range comms" they were saying that irudium may only last until 2006!!

(I've nought to do with them BTW)

Ian

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[Guest]

I'll only last until 2006, at the rate all this equipment is depleting my cruising kitty!

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[Guest]

Last week I spoke to an independent satcomms consultant. The Iridium satellites will start falling out of the sky soon! 2-3 years life for the world wide system. It will keep going for a bit longer but there'll be holes in the coverage.

Motorola are not making any more satellites, cos, no one will pay for them!

I'm going down the SSB/Kiel Radio route. It seems much more cost effective.

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[petery]

Inmarsat-C - another option

I picked up a second-hand Inmarsat-C unit with built in GPS on US e-bay. A bit bulky but it gives me 2-way e-mail and 'one' button distress.

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