The costs are pennies compared to having the take a subscription and yes, the Thuraya Hotspot with the XT phone can manage the data connection for you and close it down if you do not use it and the Satsleeve as well. Also, you don’t have to take a subscription at all and can just use a scratch card. For the amount you would normally have to pay for the subscriptions (Iridium plus weather) you can call your mom for hours while flying. But then, there is nothing wrong with the Iridium solutions around. They are great solution. The classis Nokia phone we all used 8 years ago will also still work perfectly (with a battery life that was much better than my iPhone 5s has), but I will prefer to use the features of today and not rely on old technology that is not fast and cannot deliver to provide me with the feature support of apps to come.
So will it work without any trouble to download METARS, TAFS and images through the Satsleeve with my iPhone 5?
Yes, but not all the websites work, but it is blazingly fast compared to Iridium.
but not all the websites work
Which ones?
but it is blazingly fast compared to Iridium.
At ~50000 bits/sec versus 2400 bits/sec, it should be 
I cannot understand how Iridium are able to flog such a rubbish product in the 21st century. I suppose they are successful because
I think the Satsleeve is a very clever product (not least because it does away with the crappy Thuraya phones ) and the one I saw was well made. I just wonder about the details, as mentioned earlier.
How do the airlines that offer inflight wifi work?
They must been better than 50kbs if more than 1 person on board wants to use the wifi.
Do they have a bank of sat phones??
AeroPlus,
which one of the prepaid offers do you recommend? What’s best for downloading weather, making an occasional phone call and sending some SMSs?
I understand I cannot use the BT connection to the Bose A20, right?
thx!
Alexis
The SatSleeve seems to be a nice option. But some questions seem to remain:
- is it able to get a GPS fix during the flight (which is the case of the ADL and seem very important)
- if using an iPad over wifi, does it also need a bluetooth connexion with the iphone (or this is only for initial configuration and calling ?)
- Does it work in a STABLE manner inside the cockpit (achimba had some serious difficulties with the thuraya XT, making the external antenna an obligation) or should we think about external antenna ?
- How can we limit the data transfer to one (or some) selected application(s) on the ipad ?
To Aeroplus:
- could we have some more information about the next version of your Weather App and its specifications for over-the-satellite operations ?
- what the SatBox you will soon release will bring over the Satsleeve ?
Best regards
Alexandre.
I will be extensively testing the SatSleeve on my 6 week trip through Africa and the Middle-East, so I will come with results after that. From the few flights I have made with it, it seems to work very, very well as well as that it provides data fast (as compared to Iridium based solutions). You don’t have to have a WIFI to one device and BLUETOOTH connection to another device running. This issue is that the Thuraya configuration app for iPhone connects over bluetooth while you want to access the internet via WIFI. You can have 1 bluetooth and 1 WIFI connection open to the SatSleeve, this being either either one or 2 devices. The Thuraya app for iPhone runs only on the iPhone. You can connect with any device via WIFI to the SatSleeve. I hope the concept is clear.
I have not noticed any data transfer in the background going on. This would of course be quite stupid. I will test this thoroughly during my trip.
We are working towards a major release of our apps for the upcoming Friedrichshafen airshow in April.
You can follow my trip here: http://acrossafricachallenge.com
Thuraya has now released an Samsung Galaxy version of the Sat Sleeve:
Now that is interesting ..this would enable Android data link (e.g. NEXUS7 etc..) ..?
Skydemon app…etc….
Any developers working on a Android WX solution… just asking…
The big challenge is here software integration into an existing product or stand alone..no..?
I don’t mind typing or inserting way-points once but not five times…
