Sailor SC 4000 Iridium Satellite telephone

South Pacific Familyadventure 2008
Claes Brodin
Tue 18 Sep 2012 15:09
Deciding on having e-mail onboard also out at sea there are two options.Either through your SSB-radio equipped with a Pactor modem and contracted to Sailmail or Winlink,or you go for a satellitetelephone connected to your laptop.
Wanting to be able to be in contact with land 24/7 also durong ocean crossings we opted for a satellitetelephone.There are only two providers with worldwide coverage,Inmarsat and Iridium.We bought a refurbished Sailor fixed station contracted with Iridium and Mailasail as a softwareprovider.The system has allways worked,and we had coverage all through the South Pacific something our Inmarsat collegues did not have.The system has mainly been used to bring down Gribfiles for actual weather,but also for phonecalls and e-mail contact.Iridium airtime is provided by Mailasil and the cost is around 1,3 Euro/minute.
The telephone itself has given no problems allthough we see that the rubber covering the cables is deteriorating,something we have seen on other Sailor devices(eg. VHF stations on other fellow yachts).
If looking for a stationary satellitetelephone,a refurbished Sailor can be recomended(almost halfprice compared to a new station).

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