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Starlink

Sebastian_G wrote:

Even if you pull up in a Citation you don’t want to be charged 50 Euro for the pizza at the airport restaurant ;-)

But you have to pay $500 for the minibus to take you from your aircraft to the terminal

Darley Moor, Gamston (UK)

Peter wrote:

One cannot get the required signal to noise ratio with a small antenna. It’s just physics. That’s why satellite phones never got small, and why mobile phones never used satellites but instead cover the earth with a huge quantity of expensive towers and microwave links.

What’s your definition of small? https://www.amazon.com/TerreStar-GENUS-Windows-Satellite-Phone/dp/B004U280BK

Sweden

Sebastian_G wrote:

That is not how most of them think. The crucial point is that it must be an appropriate price for the service they are getting. Even if you pull up in a Citation you don’t want to be charged 50 Euro for the pizza at the airport restaurant ;-)

I don’t know how most of these people think because I only knew very few of them. Obviously nobody of them installs this and pays the subscription for ordering pizza. They installed it for a sat weather system that is seamlessly integrated into the overall G500 / GTN panel. The text (and voice) capability is a nice addon. (And btw. the business case for a month subscription is positive if you can text your limo at nice airport to come an hour later due to some delay and you don’t have to pay for an hour waiting time… ;-))

A CJ2+ has a fuel capacity of more than 2000l. So the difference between the Garmin price of about 70EUR (80 USD is what I pay for my plan) and a plan for an alternative solution that might be available for 35 EUR/month is less than 2ct/l of fuel price difference for a single filling. It’s just nothing that the few people I know with such jets really care about…

Germany

That amazon phone is quite a fat lump. It is similar in volume to the old Thuraya phones I was testing years ago. Most of them had significant issues, starting with needing a GPS fix and having a GPS which would never lock if moving at 150kt The satellites all use beam forming (a phased array system, IOW) and they need to know where you are to switch you to the right beam and keep you on it…

The other thing common to satellite phones was amazingly crappy software. It was as if they all bought the same chips which were supported with an evaluation kit and that came with some basic code to make it run. I am fairly sure that is why e.g. action cameras, and DSLRs for that matter, have similarly crappy software. Such phones would not get public acceptance today.

It will be interesting to see which way this moves but I am confident they won’t invent new laws of physics.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

A typical The Register style article on the topic of Starlink and China – https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/15/starlink_china_crisis/

Didn’t know China is also launching their global network. How many satellites will we have by 2030?

The only world wide service that gives proper real time streaming I am aware of is Inmarsat Fleet Broadband. I have a small dome on a boat and the service is as solid and reliable as 3G with a good signal.

Malibuflyer wrote:

Honestly: I don’t know if voice still works (or if it ever did)

It does, mostly.

ELLX

Peter wrote:

I am not sure we can establish why Avidyne failed.

I agree that it was not a success by any measure but the death knell was WSI’s cancelling their InFlight data service at the end of 2017, which was what Avidyne used. It left the Avidyne equipment orphaned.

LSZK, Switzerland

I thought the MLX770 contained an Iridium modem. What happened to customers who installed it shortly before this happened?

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

What happened to customers who installed it shortly before this happened?

It still works.

EBST, Belgium
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