Avidyne gets NEXRAD well not quite but nearly.

[Fuji Abound]

Anyone seen in action Avidynes European wide "EuroRad".

There are some limitations compared with NEXRAD (in terms of whether you elect to download all the data or just the data for a narrow route) but it would be interesting to hear anyone's views.

As avionics go it doesnt seem a horrendously expensive addition.

[IO540]

I take it you mean the MLX770 (http://www.avidyne.com/products/mlx770/index.asp) system? This is very expensive, unless you already have a suitable big MFD in which case it is only a few k to install the Iridium satellite modem, the rooftop aerial, and the rest. Their radar data appears to come from meteox.com whose coverage is just N Europe.

The other, similarly expensive system, is MT (http://www.moving-terrain.de/). They use Iridium too.

The problem is that Iridium charge about $4/minute for dial-up data and this gives you just 2.4kbits/sec. OK for METARs etc but will always be pricey for radar images.

I have this working with a Thuraya SG-2520 sat phone and any windoze-running display device. Was pretty handy on a trip last weekend, too. The phone is about £500 and the "GPRS" data costs US$5/MB which is absolutely peanuts. At ~ 50kbts/sec it's also much faster. I have the details if anybody needs them.

[Fuji Abound]

Yes - if you look at their pretty map they seem to reckon they will cover most of the world by end 2008 - I wonder.

I was lead to understand they have agreed a package deal with Iridium that makes the running cost significantly less. Also the technology appears to have some clever components to reduce the data size. They say they use a very high compression protocol and you can select as much or as little of the weather relative to your track as you wish so if you route is along the north of France you dont require the data for the rest of France or anywhere else in Europe.