Satellite Telephones

I have used one several times here in Alaska for remote fly in trips. They are a dream, being in the middle of no where and being able to call home and let the wife and kid know I am okay and find out that they are ok is quite an asset. I primarily carry it for emergencies and to communicate with the pilot for my pick up.The only issue we have here in Alaska is Motorola Irridums are more reliable than Globalstar.

Douglas,

Iridium is the only viable satellite network at this time.

The Globalstar Gen I satellites have three antenna systems on them. The phone uplink antenna systems and the ground station antenna systems are working fine. The phone downlink antenna systems have amplifiers that have severely degraded from radiation exposure. It won't be until 2011 until their 48 new Gen II satellites will be in orbit. Forrester Research released a detailed analysis of the two networks 2/07. Iridium’s call success rate was measured to be 98.1 percent in Northern California and 94.7 percent in Central Texas. This is compared to Globalstar whose call success rate was 36.2 percent in Northern California and 31.8 percent in Central Texas. Call success was defined as a call connection on first attempt and avoidance of being dropped for a period of three minutes.

I've had a Globalstar Sat phone for the past 7 years. Most of my use has been in Southeast and Western — west of the Kuskokwim — Alaska. Last year the company installed an earth station north of Anchorage which was supposed to solve the dropped call problems. It did for a short time, but their satellites are/were acting up and service last summer and this past fall was awful. I had better luck before the earth station was installed. By the way, contrary to popular belief, the service plan is cheap; and you can still make the call when you need to.

You may want to look into a 2 meter radio. There is a vast network of relay antennas in Alaska and a lot of pilots use them as well. You will find them very helpful on the west and east coasts.

If you go with a sat-phone, you want the Iridium. Used one last year in remote central Idaho with absolutely no problems.

If you are truly only using for emergencies, then consider a PLB. Or if you want more versatility look at the Spot locator (uses Globalstar simplex? network) which apparently doesn't suffer from the same issues as their phones.

> Or if you want more versatility look at the Spot locator (uses Globalstar simplex? network) which apparently doesn't suffer from the same issues as their phones.
Ah … well …
On the other hand …

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