Hi,
Have seen Peter's review of using Thuraya (http://www.peter2000.co.uk/aviation/satcomms/) in his TB20 detailing his experience of a couple of years ago.
Looking at the latest available equipment there is a new "XT" phone which has an XT mobile hotspot accessory. The combination, on the surface of it, would appear a winner for a portable solution to provide inflight wifi which could be used with iPads / iPhones.
Would anyone have any real-life experience of using this combination and a current status on how the Thuraya service is performing?
Given the line-of-sight requirement for a satellite phone, would I experience any significant issues if I were to rest the phone on its side at the bottom of the glareshield (SR22)?
hearsay from some friends suggest that its almost impossible to use Thuraya inflight, but Peter's website suggests otherwise. Would be very grateful for any real-life experience of the service.
I know no more than I've written in the latest updates (at the end) of that writeup.
The old 7100/7101 phone works fine on 9600 baud dial-up, dialing the Thuraya "in-house ISP" on 1722.
Dial-up networking (DUN) is supported only by Windows platforms, and I think by Linux though I am not sure if out of the box; I was involved as a tester on a project that did all this on a cheap ex-Ebay £50 ASUS EEE laptop running Linux. No practical way to do it on IOS, or Android.
The 7100/7101 needs a fairly good condition battery, otherwise it crashes as soon as the connection is established even if it is externally powered. Fortunately they are on Ebay.
I never tested the XT.
IF Thuraya's "GMPRS" service is reliable (it wasn't a few years ago) then the hotspot should work nicely. The data rate I measured was about 50kbits/sec which is what you got on the last generation of telephone line "56k" modems. No good for sony.com etc etc and emailing megapixel photos but fine for any "real" usage.
The phone should work fine lying down, provided it can "see" the satellite through a window. Even my Ipad2 GPS works OK in a Cirrus (doesn't in a TB20).
I have ordered an XT and the Hotspot for rental and I am planning to do extensive testing next week during my flight from Germany to Egypt.
Achimha, where are you renting the kit from? I haven't done an extensive search, but the few UK providers I hit did not have any hotspot stock for rental.
Peter - thanks for your additional input. The reliability of GMPRS is a key factor otherwise there's little point in this package.
Achimha, where are you renting the kit from? I haven't done an extensive search, but the few UK providers I hit did not have any hotspot stock for rental.
There is a German company that has just received the hotspot and is starting to offer it for rent. It is quite cheap actually: www.satfon.de
Pricelist is here. The XT phone is 40 € a week incl. VAT and the wifi hotspot is 10 € a week (that's for the old USB adapter, they told me the price for the wifi might be slightly more).
I plan to do quite a bit of testing and will provide feedback. At this point, nobody seems to know anything about using this in the cockpit. Supposedly the XT's GPS chip is much better (was too hard to source the old crappy chip I guess).
Achimha - thanks for the link. If I don't get any joy from a UK provider I may give them a call.
There's a couple of us anxiously reviewing this thread to find out your experience with the unit. Looking forward to the feedback when you are able to provide it :)
There's a couple of us anxiously reviewing this thread to find out your experience with the unit.
That's how far I've gotten:
The Thuraya XT-Hotspot looks like a ripoff to me. It's a small battery powered wifi router running the OpenWRT firmware, a rebranded version of the TP-Link TL-MR3040 which sells for around € 40. It connects to the Thuraya XT using the USB data cable and the GmPRS protocol. I bet I could just buy the TP-Link and install OpenWRT myself. If it requires changes for GmPRS, these should be available from Thuraya as OpenWRT is GPL'ed. They charge € 350 for the hotspot.
We are currently developing a small SAT-box based on the Iridium network that you can stick somewhere in the luggage compartment. It has the SBD (short-burst-data) Iridium chip at first, but is going to be available in a Rudics (continuous data) version as well. It has 3 antenna-connectors: (1) for the GPS signal, (2) for the Iridium antenna and (3) for the WIFI network in the aircraft. On the board we have a small Linux distribution running which provides us with the opportunity to pack/unpack data packages for delivery over the Iridium network.
I have been testing with a first prototype 6 months ago, and it seems to work fine bringing weather into the cockpit as well as basic messaging and tracking. It is feeded through the 12V/24V power adapter, can be stored away and has a good backup battery integrated.
What are we missing out? We are not ready yet to bring it to the market, but if wanted I can show pictures of the PCB board / setup. Any suggestions would be welcome. OK, it has for now no voice capabilities with the SBD version, but will be under 995 euro on the market and cheap Iridium data/SBD subscriptions.
Interesting AeroPlus, I have been looking into developing such a product for some time because it is absolutely necessary. There is a panel mount product already (ADL110) but I believe in a portable solution for many reasons.
Your customers will require a subscription with your middle tier as they cannot directly get the weather due to the bandwidth so you will have a life long customer relationship. If you didn't try to get your margin from selling the hardware for 1000 € but instead sell it at cost price and get your margin from the subscription, it would be a lot more attractive. I'd even sell the hardware at a loss to get market penetration.
Such a solution is mostly interesting to pilots in Europe. Outside of North America and Europe there is only negligible GA to sell to. Therefore if Thuraya was a reliable option, it would be far superior to an Iridium based solution due to the transfer speed and cost.
What kind of weather data can you offer? I found it to be impossible to get good coverage of RADAR in Europe. The data is not freely available and the national weather offices charge a fortune for access. A lot of services (including Jeppesen) derive precipitation (i.e. RADAR echos) from the GFS model which is complete bullshit. I don't need a satellite connection to run a model and I'm not interested in theoretical weather.
AeroPlus, this could really be a fantastic product and at 1 AMU about the right price point for serious touring pilots but might also capture a wider audience. I have also been looking at something similar, for a long long time. I fly modest IFR across Europe, have a Strikefinder but wished we had something like XM Weather or the new ADS-B devices in the US. Something like the US Stratus that interfaces via wifi with an Ipad/Skydemon would be perfect. I have looked at the Moving Terrain (why not team up with their met server?) which is great but a bit too expensive for me with the radar option (but vastly cheaper than the Avidyne), experimented with a Ipaq and a Thuraya but so many cables and fiddling it wasn't really useable in anything but clear VMC on autopilot!
Radar data wise, I found that the French and Spanish official met sites were pretty good (the French ones require an added subscription to get the more frequently updated data but is very good, but you need to go through several menus to get to it). The German and UK ones are OK too but also require a sub for a good recent radar pic.
