From time to time we get questions about various forms of satellite communications and how they work. This is a huge subject, one with a lot of trade offs to think about. If one of the hand held systems, like the now defunct Iridium (which may be coming back) or Globalstar makes it, that would be great as it provides a compact and relatively low cost approach.

However, right now the only reliable long term solution is Sat C or Mini-m – both Inmarsat services. Many of the folks we know on larger boats have Minim which allows voice communication as well as data. We are looking into the Minim system for our proposed trip to Europe this summer.

For more information on the Sat C and Mini-m systems check out the Inmarsat website at http://www.inmarsat.org/nav/guides.html . Here you will find some interesting technical guides as well as lists of equipment and land earth station LES providers.

Satellite Phone Update (May 18, 2002)

We’ve been wrestling with the issue of what, if any, satellite phone to carry with us when we go back aboard BEOWULF. We’ve already got SailMail for our e-mail – but this does not work for sending photos for SetSail, and is a little slow for the volume of business data we need to send back and forth (it is better to divest yourself of business requirements when cruising – but we have too much fun to give it up).

So it came down to a decision between Globalstar and Iridium. We’ve used both, and they both work. Globalstar is faster at a true 9600 baud than Iridium’s 2400 baud rate (which is compressed to 9600 but which is not as fast in the real world). On the other hand, Iridium is the only game in town for certain geographic areas – and if we were headed back to the South Pacific, we’d have no hesitation in getting an Iridium.

In our case we ended up with Globalstar for several reasons. First, cost. We found a package deal on the Internet, which included phone, data kit, 12V and AC chargers, and a spare battery in a watertight case for $650. The service contract is based on an initial fee of $20/month and uses air time charge of 99 cents/minute. The service charge and phone costs are substantially less than Iridium at this time – and as we expect to be mainly within the Globalstar coverage area, it made the most sense.

Now to installation. The system came with an installation cd which works for older Windows operating systems, but not for XP. However, with XP the installation was pretty straightforward, using XP built-in commands, which I executed while taking instructions from a very efficient tech representative. Within about five minutes of work, the phone was connected to the XP laptop, and showing data transfer.

One interesting thing I learned in the process is about e-mail software. Different software has varying amounts of “overhead” and is more or less efficient at transmitting data. I have been using Outlook on the XP machine which turns out to be one of the slow programs. So, I am going back to Outlook Express.

Here is the URL where we got the Globalstar phone: http://www.gmpcs-us.com/store/globalstar.cfm