Long Range Communications

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Over the winter of 2007 a number of people at Yat Marin were asking which was the best technology to carry for long distance communications in their forthcoming transatlantic crossings. We put together a seminar to primarily compare Satellite phones and Short wave radio, commonly known as SSB (Single Sideband Radio). Our conclusion was that they both perform different but overlapping services. Some bought SSBs some bought Iridium. This is a summary of that seminar, update where required.

SSB Radio.

There are two systems using much the same equipment. the first is Marine SSB, using frequencies only within the designated marine bands. The second is Ham radio, which has a far greater range of frequencies and hence communication possibilities.

In the UK Marine SSB requires a station licence (part of your VHF licence) and a certificate of competence achieved with a 4 day course. Ham radio requires a ham Licence which is much more difficult to obtain than the marine SSB certificate. Certification in the US is much more straight forward. It should be noted that many people use Marine SSB successfully without any more knowledge than that required for VHF, once you know the frequencies used by the sailing community.



The radio setup in both cases is the same. A radio transceiver, an antenna matcher (which tunes the antenna to the frequency being used) and an antenna, which can be your backstay (once you have installed isolators) or a long fibreglass whip. To send and receive emails a special modem (called a Pactor) will also be needed to convert radio signals into digital data and back again .

Costs are a little complicated to evaluate. One of the most popular radios today is the highly regarded ICOM 802. It allows frequency selection direct from your PC. However it is not UK type approved. At 1600 GBP it is half the price of the type approved ICOM 801E. In addition various accessories will be required substantially increasing the cost. A good UK site to begin looking at cost and specs is http://www.sailcom.co.uk/

Connecting the SSB to the internet. This is achieved with the (Pactor) connected between the PC and SSB and transmitting to one of a series of land stations. Which you connect to depends on if you are a radio ham or not. Both types of user will use the freely downloadable airmail email client which to control the SSB radio from the PC directly. Hams connect to the WinLink system free of charge, others need to subscribe to SailMail for the equivalent service.

Satellite Phones



Again various models are available from various manufacturers all offering something different. If you intend to stay within Europe or Africa a Globalstar may be appropriate, especially as it mixes satellite and GSM technology in one package. If you want a truly global system for a 'normal' yacht then the Iridium system is really the only choice.



The best known phones come from Motorola in the form of the 9500 flip phone and the later 9505 and 9505A. All these phones require the optional data kit to connect to the internet/email. The latest 9555 although a little more expensive has an inbuilt USB connection for internet access so no data kit is required.



Don't think you will be able to surf the net with these phones as to do so is incredibly slow and expensive. Properly set up however they provide a simple and quick way to send and receive email at a reasonable cost. The 9555 is around 1300GBP and requires no licencing or exams to use.

So what to choose?

If you want to have two way radio contact whilst crossing oceans, then SSB is the only way unless you know the phone number of other sat phone users. If you want a global mobile phone which does not require buying a new SIM in each country you visit, and works where conventional cell phones can't reach, then iridium is unbeatable. Should you be so unlucky enough to need to make a distress call and abandon ship the portability of a sat phone compared with an SSB gives reassurance. Don't forget the Iridium phone is not waterproof, so a waterproof case like a pelican and a solar charger would be sensible accessories. Don’t forget to pre-program in Falmouth Coastguards number. Costs are straight forward. Both pay as you Go and account schemes are available. Call costs are aaround $1.50 per minute on the account scheme. A little caution on the Pay as you Go. The period of time that the call minutes are valid for depends on how many minutes you purchase.


Using email offshore

With the above systems sending and receiving offshore is now quite straight forward. However a note of caution. When you are paying a high cost for connection time or have limited minutes available, who don’t want to be bothered by spam or emails from friends who send you photos as attachment via broadband with absolutely no conception of how long its going to take to download or the cost! Worse, until you have downloaded that email you cannot access the next, which may be the weather file you badly need. The solution however is quite straightforward.

1. Make sure your system is running at max download speed. This means turning off email and system updates and preventing other programs from seeing if an update is available every time it senses an internet connection. Mailasail video
2. Create an additional email account whose address is a complete secret to you. This will do two things. First you won't get any unwanted mail, second, as the mail account is rarely used it will not attract the attention of spammers (how many times have you received a joke email sent to hundreds of people and your name is now on that list.
'Tip' If you are using 'Outlook' you can set-up multiple email accounts pointing to the same account. Set up one with a 'reply to' address different from the sending address. Use this address to get people who hit the 'reply to' button to send their mail to say your hotmail account for instance.
3. Find an email service provider that can offer a compression service to reduce airtime and also who understands the needs of the bandwidth impaired user. Luckily there is just such a provider and a good one at that. www.mailasail.com is based in London UK and is an Iridium supplier and developer. They offer several novel and cost saving features that alone justify the cost. ##

Before we found Mailasail, we subscribed to AST communications air time package. AST have proved to be a good supplier, and have been both helpful and capable whenever we asked for support.

mailsail.com features

mailasail’s mail server is dedicated to only perhaps a few hundred users, so access is rapid instead of waiting ages for the servers of say Yahoo with millions of others. Iridium users are able to receive emails as Iridium SMS messages. The message is sent to iridiumphoneno@msg.iridium.com This is limited to the standard 160 character norm of SMS messaging, allowing up to 5 messages per 10 minutes free of charge. mailasail have taken this a step further. The mail is sent instead to your mailasail email address and received in the normal way. You can now retrieve it via your email client i.e. outlook express or similar or mailasail's own web mail system. But how do you know that you have mail unless you dial up (and spend some money)? Well mailasail will additionally forward the mail as up to 5 SMS messages direct to your Iridium phone, and at no cost. If its important then you can dial up and download the mail as usual.

But what about those huge attachments mentioned earlier? Mailasail detects those (but not grib files) and quarantines them, Then sends you an email containing all the text part of the mail and a link to resend the email to you, including the attachments. Mailasail also offer a free blog service, which doesn’t require any technical knowledge and includes the track of your boat superimposed on a google maps style page. I don’t normally single out one company as maybe others are available offering a similar service just as adequately that I haven't found yet, but Ed Goose's service is, I think, unique, good value and with excellent support. I have never seen a bad comment anywhere, and my experience has been typical of others. Mailasail’s website http://www.mailasail.com/ covers most of the above and a lot else besides, with all the latest prices.

I hope this helps guide you. Overall my view and the consensus seems to be use Iridium for everything except inter-ship communications over ocean distances. Properly set up (in advance) both systems are capable and reliable with a similar cost of ownership when call costs are factored in over 3-5 years.

Email me if you want more!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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