I thought I would post a review of the Iridium Go device for the benefit of others. I was given a unit from a friend who longer needed it. As the review will show, I now know why he didn’t need it.
Iridium Go on the face of it has a lot going for it. A portable iridium-based voice, text and data system which can be had for faily effective monthly fees including one which has unlimited data. The unit is expensive c.£720/€820 but includes its built in antenna and a charging plug (USB) adapter. For aviation, most people suggest getting an optional external antenna adapter. The unit is accessed using your mobile phone which does provide numerous ways to integrate with bluetooth headsets. So far so good.
I have tested the unit in two aircraft now. The first a Citation Mustang with a dedicated Iridium antenna on the fuselage and the second a CJ3 with the antenna on the glareshield (a small external antenna a la a Golze Iridium unit).
Overall, I would say the unit is next to useless for aviation use. It seems to have significant trouble dealing with a moving vehicle and while the new Next satellites being launched by Iridium are supposed to help, I have noticed almost no difference.
For voice, the unit can sometimes make a passable voice call without dropping.
For text it works relatively well as the bandwidth and time of connection are low for a text call.
For data the unit is less reliable and slower than the 300 baud acoustic couplers of times gone past. This was tested firstly with the built in low bandwith apps for basic internet access and lastly with a dedicated aviation weather app (Aeroplus). While the dedicated app worked every now and then, there were numerous dropped calls and retries needed. This was better with the dedicated external antenna but still poor and not adequate for any sort of mission critical application or even for informational use.
When I compare the Iridium Go’s reliability for serious use with the Golze range of products, it is night and day. While I would rely on Golze for access to flight critical information (although not solely), I would view an Iridium Go as a device which might work 10% of the time and typicallly not when you really needed it.
Overall it gets a 2/10 for me. Not a bad concept but effectively useless in practice.
Interesting, thanks!
The inReach works well albeit a different mission profile.
Wonder how much this is?
https://bizjetmobile.com/
Interesting… thanks for posting that. That device has been plugged quite heavily, all over the place.
For really low bandwidth stuff I use a private wx site which presents a website and delivers the whole requested data package (only tafs and metars obviously) in a single MTU and this avoids many network problems especially ones affecting satellite connections (specifically running TCP/IP over very long latency networks).
I had a similar experience. Data transfers in AeroPlus breaking up constantly.
The onboard GSR56 I use is much more reliable, but with limited coverage.
What I found it good for was sending messages with position reports every 5 minutes. It almost never failed during 96 hours flying.
What are it’s competitors? Is there anything better that would allow download of sat images when over ocean?
Thanks for this.
I was heavily leaning to buy this for a transatlantic run where satcom will likely be needed.
I’m with @loco though, if not iridium for inflight satcoms (basically required in Greenland), then what, if any?
Can’t stop and pull out a phone…
Inmarsat barely reaches that region, although the antenna would be easier to mount at ~10deg elevation and almost due south…
If you are interested in the Iridium GO! please have a look at my video:
The ADLConnect solution is rather new but so far the existing customers seem to be very satisfied. If you want in flight phone capability and in flight weather from the same device this is in my opinion currently the lowest cost solution.
If you want “real internet” in flight things will get way more expensive. The hardware will be 5 digits and monthly charges 3 to 4 digits…
The Iridium Go! device needs a good view of the sky or better, an external antenna for it to work properly. It is possible to make calls over Iridium, even using your Bose A20 headset, but there is a latency when calling, so you need to use it a bit like a push-to-talk device and continue to talk without interruptions, then stop talking and giving the other party time to talk. If you do short talks, with interruptions of the other calling party, the latency will play up. I use it to make calls in Africa and it is, yes, far from ideal, but it works.
Same for the data, downloads might be interrupted here and there, but that was mostly in the past due to certain gaps in the satellite network (coverage), so if the transmission was longer than a few minutes, it would interrupt. Most of these problems were solved by Iridium.
Please note that there is also a firmware update that came out last year for the device. It now also supports short burst data (SBD). Great to see that @Sebastian_G: now supports the Iridium Go! device with his great ADLConnect solution.
AeroPlus wrote:
so if the transmission was longer than a few minutes, it would interrupt
I think the key is to keep the transmission short. I just did this download from my office window. This video is uncut and real time:
The route was not very long but if took just about 45 seconds from start to finish. Even longer routes take less than 1 minute. This keeps the transmission costs low and reduces the potential consequences of intermittent satellite service.
Thanks @AeroPlus and @Sebastian_G
I briefly glanced at your website Sebastian, but didn’t have enough time to go through it in detail.
I’ve worked in places like Africa and Greenland, and understand the capabilities (and mainly, limitations) of satcoms.
So my intended purposes is primarily for emergency comms, and for lost radio comms (very common in Greenland).
I’ll be flying a Mooney over, any specific recommendation? (now perusing the website, thanks)
