HF radio or Sat phone

[jxc]

This has been asked in the past but want to see if anything has changed

north atlantic ?

South pacific ?

In this day and age I would hope sat phone would suffice but you guys may tell me otherwise

If it has to be Hf radio what would you install in it as a 'N' reg experimental
How do you go about the aerial dragging behind the aircraft

[IO540]

An Iridium satphone will work in these areas and will be far more useful for emergencies.

But if you fly in an airspace where HF is mandatory then obviously you need HF.

[Humaround]

I'm reading Manuel Quieroz's excellent new book 'Chasing the Morning Sun' about his transworld trip in an RV6. He took both sat phone and HF, and found the sat phone useless in the air. I believe he felt the mic did not cope well with cockpit noise, maybe other reasons too.

The HF worked well. Manuel strung the long HF aerial wire along the port wing and then onto the tail, and he found it caused a significant out-of-balance trim, requiring slight pressure for hour after hour on the rudder (his Pacific flights were around 15 hours). He used each foot in turn and occasionally both feet!

[jxc]

Aren't sat phones able to be plug into a headset

[IO540]

For any phone to be usable airborne you need a proper headset/intercom connection. Piston cockpits are very noisy :) It also helps to have a dedicated rooftop antenna. I have a Iridium/Thuraya antenna but have so far not bothered to use it since I use the phone only for internet taf/metar data and for that one just needs to hold it pointing at the satellite (Thuraya has a specific satellite; Iridium have loads).

[jxc]

IO540

You seam pretty clued up on most things any idea how much it would cost to stream video data for 200hrs at say 720p ?
how many thousands £

[IO540]

You post just a one-liner Q with no supporting info... Guessing what you actually want:

This is way outside my area of personal expertise but I do know this: if you need to ask how many thousands that internet bandwidth to an aircraft in flight is going to cost you, you definitely can't afford it :)

720P is basically HD, which "fully" is 1080P. Video can be compressed pretty well; look up a tool called Handbrake which produces quite nice HD videos using the "Iphone4" preset, with an average bit rate config of 1mbit/sec e.g. this one (http://www.zen74158.zen.co.uk/videos/canon-legria-g10-no-prop-effect.m4v) on which the camera work is obviously crap but it illustrates what it doable with just 1mbit/sec. That is HD footage which is better than 720P. In fact nobody is making any material at 720P today (I mean 720 lines and 50P/25P).

To get 1mbit/sec to an airborne aircraft you will be looking at Immarsat, I think. Loads of money. Thuraya offers max ~50kbits/sec and the service is flakey at best. Iridium offers a fantastic 2.4kbits/sec :yuk: Globalstar is barely functional AFAIK. Not sure who that leaves... I suggest you contact a high end (business jet / large yacht) internet feed provider.

OTOH you may be able to get a television feed, if that's what you really want. Satellite TV comes down via a geostationary satellite. I know gin palace yachts have gyro stabilised TV dishes; no idea of planes can have that too.

[jxc]

This is way outside my area of personal expertise but I do know this: if you need to ask how many thousands that internet bandwidth to an aircraft in flight is going to cost you, you definitely can't afford it

You are right there I cant but i am hoping a sponsor may pay for that, I think it is easier to just upload video after each leg in a hotel etc

[IO540]

You want to transmit video (or data, in effect) from an aircraft....

Depending on the duty cycle of the video, something might be doable at a lower cost. At a 100% duty cycle, you are back to very pricey solutions.

But yeah uploading on the ground is going to be by far the cheapest. Even then, you can't upload gigabytes on some wifi connection in a cafe, and many hotel connections are throttled on the uplink (to make P2P impractical).

You need to post more details.

[wigglyamp]

For a reasonable speed airborne internet data you need Swift Broadband - the lite version will manage 200 Kbps. It has an electronically-steered antenna on top of the fuselage, so not the large moving version that goes in the fin of a big corporate jet. The equipment starts from around $70K and the operating cost is around $5/Mb, so similar to mobile internet on an iPhone when outside your host country.

[IO540]

Is that 200kbps on the uplink speed?

[jxc]

I think I will just upload video after each leg and use the sat phone for talking on

Simples

[shaun.s]

Curious what trip you're planning, jxc- able to tell us?

[jxc]

Spitfire World Challenge (http://www.spitfireworldchallenge.com)

[IO540]

Your biggest challenge will not be uploading HD video; it will be getting avgas drums shipped to all these places and landing just in time before the drums get nicked by the locals :)

[jxc]

Probably right but lets have faith in human kind (must take medication)
can be run on Mogas as well
Hope to have some great news about a sponsor in a few weeks

I also want to install an MGL Odyssey 10.4" efis

[banjodrone]

As IO540 says "An Iridium satphone will work in these areas and will be far more useful for emergencies. But if you fly in an airspace where HF is mandatory then obviously you need HF."

But if it turns out that you need HF, which from looking at your routing I think you will, things will get a bit complicated. I have no experience of international flight routing but I'm an active Ham Operator and was a Ships Radio Officer. HF Single Sideband works great when you know how to use it but it's certainly not something you would want to attempt to use for the first time while over an ocean. It would almost certainly have to be professionally installed and the Plane's radio licence details amended or updated.

As far as I know, you don't need any qualification other than an FCC restricted radio operators permit, which you probably already have if you are flying N-reg planes in the UK. Having said that it is something you need a bit of experience in to use it effectively, in terms of choosing the right frequencies for effective propagation and just being able to decipher the often garbled "Donald Duck" style transmissions.

You could arrange to meet with a local amateur radio group and I'm sure they would be more than happy to give you a demo of what real live HF SSB sounds like.

Also you could try posting in other forums to get the opinion of some experienced Ferry Pilots.

Modern HF Antenna's don't have to be of the wire type although these will be generally more effective. In any case any installation would almost certainly need to be custom installed by professionals. There may be a wire antenna stretched between various points on the airplane but not a trailing one.

If it turns out that it is needed I think it would be very do-able with effective preparation. In any case, carrying an Iridium unit in addition to this would be a wise decision.

Best of Luck.

[Sam Rutherford]

Our experiences over last few years pottering about the world...

Satphones work (and well); but you need to invest in the Iridium 'aviation' antenna (not the same as the car one), and the boost the audio signal into the headset using a "Safety Cell", battery powered, amplified headset adaptor.

For HF, ahem, we cheat. We carry portable HF systems (the awesome QMAC HF90 for the anoraks), and a long-wire antenna. We have never needed to use them in the air (satphone is better!), but it does mean that when asked by ATC if you have HF you can say 'yes'. If, though, the aircraft was to go down, the HF90 would be fantastic (we use them extensively on the ground).

It's not legal (the HF is supposed to be fully-fitted), but it's a solution that avoids uncomfortable RT discussions, costs about 30K less, and could be a lifesaver after a crash...

Fly safe, Sam.



PS might be able to help with your avgas needs!





11-03004SAFETY CELL BATTERY POWERED$175.00

[jxc]

Thanks for the info guys

Sam I will be in contact with you in the coming months to rack your brains if you don't mind ?

[Sam Rutherford]

Of course, no problems!

We're organising a London-Australia at the moment, so should have some useful stuff for your trip.

Fly safe, Sam.