SSB or Sat Phone or Sat Communicator

[jerrytug]

Interesting. I was going from the GMDSS "rules" which assume no sat coms in the far north and south. How do you get geo stationary satellites over the poles?

Not stationary, they barrel along, even faster than GPS satellites and your signal is swapped between satellites as they whizz over.
Have a google of Iridium, the technical aspects are fascinating!

 

[Roberto]

Not stationary, they barrel along, even faster than GPS satellites and your signal is swapped between satellites as they whizz over.
Have a google of Iridium, the technical aspects are fascinating!

The formal difference is Iridium is *not* part of GMDSS, whereas Inmarsat is. That's where the A3-A4 areas come from.
In other words satellite comms are available everywhere (polar areas included, through Iridium), but not GMDSS satcomms which only rely on Inmarsat geostationary satellites which do not cover poles

 

[Martin_J]

Like I said, have everything.

Cheers

Sorry James.. Just that you had not mentioned DSC via your HF rig.

In fact, nobody had mentioned DSC on HF so I just thought it ought to be added to the mix.

 

[oldvarnish]

How do you get geo stationary satellites over the poles?

You'll be doing well if you get your boat as far as the poles - you might, of course, be planning a bit of overland. Otherwise Iridium will do you.

We've been through all this before and my view remains the same: SSB, sat phone, and Delorme communicator(and similar) all do different jobs and it is not a case of one or the other.

I use SSB for chatting to other boats, listen to nets, download fax charts.
I use a sat phone with a laptop to do email and download GRIBs
I use Delorme to let the folks back home know I'm OK, and they send simple messages back usually saying the same.

Three toys, three different uses, and not one of them can do all the jobs of the other two.