I thought I'd consult the brain trust. I am ready to invest in a sat phone of my very own and wanted to know what you folks reccomend. I will be up north, so I assume Iridium is the brand of choice. I was curious if anyone was using the Iridium Extreme, http://www.iridiumextreme.com/. It looks cool, and has all the bells and whistles.

Thanks for any advice.

Brad

I don't think you'll go wrong with the Extreme. If anything you might be buying slightly more features than the average person needs. You can get a non-Extreme version that is a similar handset if you are mainly concerned with making phone calls. The Extreme has some nice anti-shock, dust and moisture features, as well as a one-touch emergency-alert button with pre-programmed dialing. It also has internal GPS, and SMS (texting) ability.

I bought an Extreme for someone else a year ago. it was nice and solid feeling, and I liked how compact it was. Personally I have an original model 9500 that is still going strong, and two model 9505s. The 9500 is now going on 13 years old. It won't die. The Iridium network has always functioned well for me in Interior Alaska (63 degrees north), also Midway Atoll, East Africa, Lower 48.

I used to think texting on a sat phone was just fluff, but I can see a couple of good reasons for it. If you do have spotty reception (due to terrain, etc), it just takes the briefest connection to get a message through. Also, if you are out in the field, you don't want to have to call up all your friends to find out if they thought of one last thing you should do before flying home. And personally I don't leave the phone on for receiving, because of battery and other practical issues. But if you can get incoming texts, then it is a quick matter to see if anyone has a timely message for you. (e.g. put the cabin key in the wood shed, leave 5 gallons of 100LL at the south end of the strip for me, tell Zane I'll be in tomorrow at 2:00 if he needs more beer...)

There was some talk of making the Globalstar network more robust again. I can't address the status of that. I traded out two Globalstar phones I had in 2008 because at the time the service stank.

Hope that helps,

-DP

Thanks DP, Thats exactly what I was looking for. Unless I get warned off for a good reason I think the extreme will be the ticket.

Brad

Here is a new goodie that combines with your iPhone to become a sat phone:
http://gizmodo.com/5991685/this-case-turns-your-iphone-into-a-satellite-phone

I have found Sat Phones to be really finicky. The SMS feature was actually the best thing for me, but the delivery was weird, no rhyme or reason to when they where delivered, often out of sequence. That led to some peculiar misconceptions. I found in Borneo, in the mountains, reception to be very limited. The sky view, depending on the orientation of the valleys made the reception period limited to a couple of minutes. It was affected by vegetation, tin roofs and rain. It was really annoying to have to stand smack in the middle of the valley, in the rain, to get shitty reception and limited talk time. All for the price of phone sex per minute.

There are a couple of services that will rent you a phone with a data package for a week at a time. You can try out different phones before you buy.

dogpilot wrote:Here is a new goodie that combines with your iPhone to become a sat phone:
http://gizmodo.com/5991685/this-case-turns-your-iphone-into-a-satellite-phone

A link that shows their satellite coverage: http://www.thuraya.com/network-coverage Satellite coverage doesn't cover North America.

GSM coverage covers most of N.A., but not Alaska...... I'm not sure what GSM coverage is, but not AK??

MTV

dogpilot wrote:Here is a new goodie that combines with your iPhone to become a sat phone:
http://gizmodo.com/5991685/this-case-turns-your-iphone-into-a-satellite-phone

That would be awesome if it worked and had global coverage. Biggest shortcoming I would see is that iPhones are so intolerant of cold.

Iridium may charge for incoming calls. If you make incoming/outgoing calls from local telephones get the USA telephone number option. It switches out of Arizona to your satphone.

My friends got big bills from me calling them! Not sure if this is still the case because, last trip down under I called home and nobody got billed. The issue may of been fixed.

My wife and I are renting a sat phone in two weeks for a little skiing/camping adventure we have planned. I'll write up a review on the process when we get back.

I don't know if I want Sat Phone but I did look at this and Message SPOT -This looks good for the price http://www.rei.com/product/840417/delor ... 1b2166c2c0
or this http://www.rei.com/product/842399/briar ... nd-android

or this http://www.rei.com/product/842399/briar ... nd-android

There are some great products for texting, I am attached to a sat phone so I can get weather from flight service. Last time I was in the arctic in Canada they where remarkable in their ability to give me the days flying window well in advance.

Brad

Durango Skywagon wrote:There are some great products for texting, I am attached to a sat phone so I can get weather from flight service. Last time I was in the arctic in Canada they where remarkable in their ability to give me the days flying window well in advance.

Brad

Here's the Latest product http://inreachdelorme.com/product-info/inreachse.php they have tracking plans and lots of message options think this is me.

I promised above that I'd write up our experience with renting a set phone. I've thought about doing it several times over the years, but hadn't done it until recently.

My wife and I circumnavigated Crater Lake on skis a little over a week ago. It was a four-day trip (three nights snow camping). Cell coverage is really spotty up there, and we wanted to be able to check in with our kids who were being taken care of by their grandma. There was always the possibility that we'd get delayed due to weather also, so we wanted to be able to tell people that we were OK, just hunkered down.

After a little internet research, I rented an Iridium 9555 phone from a company called Mobal. There are several companies that do this, but these guys seemed to have reasonable prices.

The rental cost is $12 / day, including shipping both ways. When you're done with the phone, just drop it off at a FedEx location with the included return shipping label.

Included was pretty much everything you could need: The phone of course, two batteries, a car charger, a wall charger, etc.
We were able to call our kids every night on the trip, and the phone acquired signal within just a few seconds each time. The only time we had any problems was when we were camped in a narrow spot with a snow bank on one side and tall trees on the other. Other than that, it worked like a charm!

I figure for $12/day, I'll definitely rent a sat phone for our planned trip up to Alaska next summer.