Sat Phones

[Hoveronly]

Anyone use the Thuraya or Iridium sat phone in the arcraft as an Operations/safety tool? Comments on operating costs, usefullness?

[ShyTorque]

Yes, one of our aircraft has an Iridium phone. Can be useful on occasions but in view of the multiple sectors we fly, often in in busy airspace we actually tend to use our mobiles on the ground far more often. We can't use the phone until the aircraft has a generator on line.

Our company boss and senior passengers used it a few times when it was a novelty item but now it seems to be mainly forgotten!

[opsjockey]

Our company have sat fones in our 757's and also on in ops. Must admit that they are rarely used as the crew normally use their company mobiles or use a phone patch thru Stockholm radio. I have used the Iridium handsets in flight over Turkmenistan to call the UK with no problems and on the ground in Baku, Kabul, Robertsfield and various parts of Africa again with no problems both making and receiving calls. I've no idea of the call charges but i know the handsets are around £1000 each.....

[Ascend Charlie]

We have iridium in our S76. It works very well, and we use it to pass operational information back and forth. We can also take it out of the aircraft for a hand-held, but usually our mobiles are preferable.

It costs around $3 US to connect a call, and most of our calls are only 20-30 seconds. It was a total PITA to fit the kit. The manufacturer's instructions were garbage, the installation kit was missing some parts and we had to manufacture another part ourselves.:{

The wiring diagram was totally wrong and could never work. But our engineers designed a method, and got it to work. Running the wires through the roof to the antenna was another story!:ok:

[JHR]

We have Sky Connect Satellite tracking and phone capability in 15 A/C operating in Alaska. We also carry hand held Sat Phones. They have been life savers on a couple of occasions and are a very usefull tool to have for remote operations. We have had reliability problems with the Sky Connect installation. The company has been working well to help us sort out our problems. The system is well worth the cost for remote areas.

JHR

[Impress to inflate]

I have used the Iridium system a few times offshore and found it worked well all be it with a bit of a delay in the line. Very clear line. Only on the line for a couple of mins to get some TAFs. Not sure of the cost but I was informed it was about £1 per min. It's one of those gadgets that when you need it, you REALLY need it.

[soggyboxers]

When I was working in Cameroun we had Ascom Thuraya satellite handsets in all the helicopters. There are more modern handsets now, but the ones we had were not too large and had both GSM and satellite capabilities. We normally set them to give GSM networks priority, then if the phone didn't detect any GSM network it would change to satellite mode. They are relatively inexpensive, prices being comparable to a new top-end GSM phone, and they are around twice the size of a modern GSM phone - quite easy to fit into a flight bag. I found them to be very good pieces of equipment, especially as much of our time was in the bush well away from any GSM networks. They had the added feature of built in GPS. When we were flying along the border with Nigeria for the UN, the Camerounian Gendarmes used their satphones to send us the GPS co-ordinates for the landing pads they had found for us. Thuraya covers most of Africa north of around 5 degrees south of the equator. Because the satellite is rather higher than the other systems there is a bit of a time delay for voice communications, but I found speech clarity to be good. It was sometimes necessary to juggle around the position of the little telescopic aerial to get the best signal strength. For a comparison of the major satellite phone systems this is quite a good website:
http://www.outfittersatellite.com/thuraya_globalstar_iridium.htm

Now, in Nigeria, we have the Sky Trac systems ISAT fitted to most of our S76C+s, utilising the Iridium satellite system. The basic installation gives automatic tracking of the aircraft by any computer with the software and an internet connection. We now also have the DVI (despatch voice interface) on our newer aircraft and this allows up to 10 telephone numbers to be programmed into the system. If there's a problem we can make or receive calls to/from any of the programmed numbers. It works very well.

[Flaxton Flyer]

Just had a Skyconnect system fitted into our 902 HEMS machine via Avionics Mobile. The clarity is very good once you are connected, but that can sometimes take a couple of attempts. Price depends upon if you are calling a landline, mobile or another satphone. Cheapest is sat - sat.

We are also currently trialling a tracking package which interfaces with our mission management system, giving our despatcher location, heading and speed information with altitude pending. This info is sent via the satphone at 1 minute intervals whenever the phone is not being used for voice comms, and the aircraft is tracked on a moving map. Working very well so far.

[Hoveronly]

I like the idea of cell phone priority as there are some areas of coverage in Tanzania but still vast areas without. Not sure if the newer Thurayas have that facility though...worth a thought!

Thanks for the link Soggyboxers.;) and all the other replies!

[TomBola]

boboutofkenya,
There are some new models of Thuraya phone which still have the dual GSM/Thuraya facility. Just go to search for Thuraya phones on Google and you should be able to find one. I'm pretty sure Ascom still do a dual model which I'm interested in buying as the local networks here are often very congested in the evening and it's almost impossible to make an overseas call.

[copterdr76]

Looking into a Sat Phones System, AirCell or Latitude....any one willing to share their thought ? Please send PM System would be for our AW139,s

[EN48]

Had an Air Cell ST 3100 in my PC-12. Worked flawlessly. Suggest that you be sure to integrate it with the pilot's audio panel so that calls can be made/received through your headset. Have a GlobalStar GSP 1600 in my helo. Cant recommend this as GlobalStar has some problems with their satellites which results in limited capability until sometime in 2010 (they say). About to change this out for an Iridium unit.

[copterdr76]

Check out the Iridium 9555....hand unit

[Flying Bull]

Hi hoveronly,

we have iridium phones fitted - into the station box - so everybody can hear.
Had some problems with calls from base not coming through - but that could be a providerproblem, we´re checking on this.
When working - very good quality.
New gadget is the datamode, which allows base to send messages and new coordinates to the GPS (helimap) - and sending short burst messages down with status, position, heading and speed, so that base is informed about our whereabouts.
Talking is not that expensive - compared to a few more minutes flight time cause you don´t have the information needed.........
Data mode is even cheaper

Greetings Flying Bull

[Heliringer]

We use Iridium wired through a Flight Cell box and have never had any problems with it. When you land you just unplug the SAT phone and off you go. Great for the remote areas I work in.

[GeorgeMandes]

If you don't wear a helmet, a lower cost solution is a Zulu headset and plugging in an Iridium portable sat phone. (The Zulu will interface a cell phone via Bluetooth and the Iridium sat phone by a patch cord.) Iridium just released a smaller unit in December. Here is a picture showing the new smaller unit versus the previous model.

http://i250.photobucket.com/albums/gg251/GJMandes/DSC00896Small.jpg

Another option is a PS Engineering 8000B audio panel -- it has a port to plug in a cell or sat phone.

[tomotomp]

anyone got one in a S76B, be interested to hear how it works

[Aser]

In ours AW139 we use the Skytrack ISAT-100 Iridium.
Not bad.

Regards
Aser

[airotay]

I use the Iridium 9505A. I love the thing. It come in handy when cell coverage is not an option. I buy the pre-paid cards of 500 minutes and the time will last for a year. It works out to be about $1.30 a minute. Anywhere in the world. That's cheaper than a cell phone in some regions. It's cheap insurance. When the time is right I would love to get my hands on the new 9555.

Check this site out they seem to have some of the best pricing that I can find.
Satellite Phones, International Cell Phones, International SIM Cards and International BlackBerry® Smartphones (http://www.roadpost.com/index.aspx)

[helimek]

Hello there,

Need help.

We have in our AW139 the above system, I had the Tail gearbox cowlings off to test the chip detector, therefore I had power on the machine without the antennas for the ISAT, and now the system are not working, it starts up normally, no error message, all antennas okay, can't find any information about it, I have contacted Skytrack in Canada, and they know about the problem, and they say that we just have to reset the system, but tried that without luck, have any of you guys experienced the same, if so, how the H*** did you fix it??

In advance many thanks.

Mike.

[Etouffee]

We use SkyConnect and iridium in all of our aircraft and have been pleased with the support and the over all service.

A few things of note; most of the time the conversation is clearer/cleaner on the aircraft end then it is at the ground station end. It's not unusual to have to sit on a call for 60+ seconds and wait for the satellite to clear up the connection. If you add +1 dialing, an option here in the US, to make the call long distance instead of international it can cause you to get solicitation calls from auto dialer systems.

Nothing like being in the middle of the flight and A+ Credit calls you on your sat phone with an offer to increase your credit line!

Last week I had a preview of a FlightCell unit and it looks pretty nice. It opens up a lot of possibility when you add cellular service to the equation.

Also with iridium adding ADS-B to all of the new satellites, having a combined solution will be a must have in about 5 years.

[Keepitup]

Hi All,

Need some advice. We have an Aircell ST3100 fitted to one of our helicopters and I need to get the service initiated (Very Low usage). The question is,

Do I have to goto GoGoAir(Aircell) for the subscription service ?.

I have looked at the unit and it doesn't appear to have an access to the SIM card, therefore it must be built in and I am restricted to who I can goto.
Any Advice would be appreciated

Keepitup