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).
|
