Menu Sign In Contact FAQ
Banner
Welcome to our forums

Thuraya XT now works under win8, over USB, GPRS, 50kbits/sec

Finally!

The software is here

You need to update the phone firmware, as instructed, and then install the "Thuraya XT upgrader v1.6 " which also happens to load the USB drivers.

It took them only 3 years to do this

The data cost on PAYG is about $6.50/MB. There is no per-minute billing, so no need to keep disconnecting the connection.

Thuraya also “remove” an annual amount of approx $40 from your balance, so you can’t just put $50 on the SIM card and keep it for 10 years, just in case you need it. This is greedy but is better than what they used to operate which was a confiscation of your entire balance after 3/6/12 months (depending on the size of the last top-up). It is similar to what just about all cellular networks operate on PAYG SIMs which is to terminate the SIM after 90 or 180 days, but at least they don’t do the termination if there has been a chargeable event during the period. Thuraya give you the same concession but only on annual usage over about $1500!

I’ve just downloaded a huge amount of wx data, images, etc, and it came to below $2.

The downside is that this cannot be done with an Ipad and is possible but nontrivial on Android (I tried and gave up). So you need a Windows tablet (winXP through to win8).

I also tried their “XT-Hotspot” WIFI adaptor (which turns the XT phone into a WIFI access point) but could not get it to work reliably. A pity because WIFI enables the use of any client device. I suspect the reason is that most mobile devices regard WIFI as a “free open and fast network” and they go crazy sending stuff back to their respective Church of Scientology, downloading updates, etc, and this just kills the 50kbits/sec connection. Whereas “dial-up” connections (in this case, the standard *99# GPRS/3G number) are not normally treated by the O/S as available for these purposes. In any case, the instant you have a passenger who logs into the WIFI with their phone, you can forget getting weather over that connection I was testing the hotspot with my S6 phone which like all modern Android does a lot of background data transfers.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I had no problems with the XT hotspot. It contains iptables, you can setup firewall rules to block traffic.

Nowadays I use the SatSleeve which I think is much more practical as it’s one device that does all and much smaller. I just put it somewhere in the aircraft that gives good reception (flying South on the glareshield, flying North in the back of the plane, flying East/West more difficult in a high wing Cessna…). Still planning to build the antenna connection from an old Thuraya carholder that I received as a gift. Annoying about the SatSleeve is that you need a mobile phone with their crappy and crashing app to enable the data service, then connect to its wifi from your tablet and afterwards disable the data service again. It can be any mobile phone though where the app is available (Android, iOS).

Given that you’re about the only one using a Windows PC in the cockpit, the solution with XT over USB is not generally applicable. It gives good control over things though with the 1990s PC semantics.

Last Edited by achimha at 05 Aug 07:07

Yes, and “modern” people use Android and IOS, and windows tablets have a crap touch interface, but compared with commercial (i.e. Iridium) airborne data solutions, this option is exceedingly cheap, and much more versatile because you can do normal stuff like web (excluding crazy-design sites like e.g. sony.com), email, “free” instant messaging (Whatsapp, Telegram, etc) over Thuraya.

you can setup firewall rules to block traffic

I had already spent days setting up the windoze firewall to do that, over the old Thuraya 9.6k dial-up connection.

I would have no idea how to do that for an Android or IOS client which has perhaps 100 processes all going covertly online. The only way would be to firewall everything and allow just the IP/name of the one specific weather website, but that defeats the flexibility of the high speed Thuraya connection.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

You would firewall on the XT hotspot. That’s the downside of the SatSleeve solution, you have to firewall the connection externally. There is iptables on every Android device and there are nice apps to configure it. Apparently you no longer need to root your device: https://www.maketecheasier.com/best-firewall-apps-android/

Anyway, what I was trying to say is that there really is no need for a Windows laptop to make this all work and the XT is both an old product and more expensive than the SatSleeve. So for 99% of all Thuraya interested pilots, I would recommend the SatSleeve in combination with a mobile phone and optionally tablet (phone required for Bluetooth setup).

Last Edited by achimha at 05 Aug 07:50
4 Posts
Sign in to add your message

Back to Top