Tuesday, January 12, 2010 |
Author: Jacob
A recent post on another cruisers blog stuck with me, and left me feeling the need to present an alternate viewpoint on the Ham/SSB vs. sat phone debate.
We use an Iridium satellite phone with a third-party email service, and we also have a stand-alone Sony HF Radio Receiver.
1) Cost
A lot of times the reasons given for preferring HF radio over sat phone is the cost: "Aren't minutes like super expensive?!" Yes, the minutes are very expensive, but it's not so simple. Looking quickly at Landfall navigation I see a complete Icom M-802 HF radio/email setup for ~$4800. Now, I don't know much about radios, but to give the benefit of the doubt, I'll go with other people's numbers and assume that it would cost more like $3500 to get a complete radio & email package assuming you do the installation.
Buying a brand new Iridium phone (again at Landfall), plus the data package (to connect to your computer) and 500 minutes would cost you right around $2500.
We use UUPlus.com for our sat phone email service and data compression. This costs us $350/year, but saves air-time. They also provide some peripheral weather services that are handy. We check email almost every day (using wifi when in port, and sat phone when not) and seem to be averaging <500 minutes per year. This includes the occasional phone conversation.
For two years of sat phone:
Purchase + 1000 minutes of airtime: ~$3200
Two years of UUPlus: $700
Total: $3900
For two years of HF radio/email:
Purchase: $3500
Email service for two years (if you don't have a Ham license): $500
Total: $4000 (SSB) or $3500 (Ham)
So essentially, even if you use sat phone minutes at a very good clip, for the first two years the costs are very similar. I would characterize the radio approach as more economical in the long term, but certainly not wildly different than a sat phone. For many of us, with time horizons on our cruising plans, the sat phone will not prove to be significantly more expensive than the SSB.
2) Installation
HF radio...a bunch. Sat phone...none. For us, this was a major factor as we had a long list of 'must do' items, and time was precious.
3) Safety
The radio gives you the advantage of being able to get in touch with other cruisers. So, if you go aground and need some help getting off, or lose your engine, you can count on at least being able to talk with fellow cruisers. On the other hand, we have the onboard email addresses of plenty of other cruisers. If we felt we needed assistance in one of these non-critical emergencies we could email them and ask them to coordinate assistance via a net.
In a true emergency we feel the sat phone would be far and away superior to the HF radio, primarily because you can keep it in your ditch bag. We also keep the Coast Guard's search and rescue center number programmed in.
4) Voice
I don't really know all that much about getting a radio patch to a landline, but with the sat phone you can always just dial the number. We've used this feature several times, and never had any issues with signal quality or connection. The sound can be a bit 'tinny' but hey, you're sending your voice to a satellite and back!
5) Weather
The radio nets are a very important source of weather information. You can receive some of the transcriptions of the weather nets via email using saildocs, and you can get a stand-alone all-band receiver ($150) that lets you listen in to the nets. We have been playing around with clipping our antenna to the backstay, and we've been getting great reception.
6) Doomsday scenario
Uh really? Are you serious? If the satellites go out the last thing I want to be doing between taking celestial fixes is talking to someone in a bunker in Montana on Ham radio.
All in all I really don't think that either of the approaches is far and away superior to the other. They both have their strengths and weaknesses, and how you weight those will depend on what equipment is already on the boat, and your own communication needs.
For us using the Iridium phone for email and the occasional phone conversation, combined with a cheap HF radio receiver for weather, has been ideal, and we wouldn't do it differently if we were outfitting again.
We use an Iridium satellite phone with a third-party email service, and we also have a stand-alone Sony HF Radio Receiver.
1) Cost
A lot of times the reasons given for preferring HF radio over sat phone is the cost: "Aren't minutes like super expensive?!" Yes, the minutes are very expensive, but it's not so simple. Looking quickly at Landfall navigation I see a complete Icom M-802 HF radio/email setup for ~$4800. Now, I don't know much about radios, but to give the benefit of the doubt, I'll go with other people's numbers and assume that it would cost more like $3500 to get a complete radio & email package assuming you do the installation.
Buying a brand new Iridium phone (again at Landfall), plus the data package (to connect to your computer) and 500 minutes would cost you right around $2500.
We use UUPlus.com for our sat phone email service and data compression. This costs us $350/year, but saves air-time. They also provide some peripheral weather services that are handy. We check email almost every day (using wifi when in port, and sat phone when not) and seem to be averaging <500 minutes per year. This includes the occasional phone conversation.
For two years of sat phone:
Purchase + 1000 minutes of airtime: ~$3200
Two years of UUPlus: $700
Total: $3900
For two years of HF radio/email:
Purchase: $3500
Email service for two years (if you don't have a Ham license): $500
Total: $4000 (SSB) or $3500 (Ham)
So essentially, even if you use sat phone minutes at a very good clip, for the first two years the costs are very similar. I would characterize the radio approach as more economical in the long term, but certainly not wildly different than a sat phone. For many of us, with time horizons on our cruising plans, the sat phone will not prove to be significantly more expensive than the SSB.
2) Installation
HF radio...a bunch. Sat phone...none. For us, this was a major factor as we had a long list of 'must do' items, and time was precious.
3) Safety
The radio gives you the advantage of being able to get in touch with other cruisers. So, if you go aground and need some help getting off, or lose your engine, you can count on at least being able to talk with fellow cruisers. On the other hand, we have the onboard email addresses of plenty of other cruisers. If we felt we needed assistance in one of these non-critical emergencies we could email them and ask them to coordinate assistance via a net.
In a true emergency we feel the sat phone would be far and away superior to the HF radio, primarily because you can keep it in your ditch bag. We also keep the Coast Guard's search and rescue center number programmed in.
4) Voice
I don't really know all that much about getting a radio patch to a landline, but with the sat phone you can always just dial the number. We've used this feature several times, and never had any issues with signal quality or connection. The sound can be a bit 'tinny' but hey, you're sending your voice to a satellite and back!
5) Weather
The radio nets are a very important source of weather information. You can receive some of the transcriptions of the weather nets via email using saildocs, and you can get a stand-alone all-band receiver ($150) that lets you listen in to the nets. We have been playing around with clipping our antenna to the backstay, and we've been getting great reception.
6) Doomsday scenario
Uh really? Are you serious? If the satellites go out the last thing I want to be doing between taking celestial fixes is talking to someone in a bunker in Montana on Ham radio.
All in all I really don't think that either of the approaches is far and away superior to the other. They both have their strengths and weaknesses, and how you weight those will depend on what equipment is already on the boat, and your own communication needs.
For us using the Iridium phone for email and the occasional phone conversation, combined with a cheap HF radio receiver for weather, has been ideal, and we wouldn't do it differently if we were outfitting again.
3 comments:
We had a satphone last time we went and have a sideband this time. We didn't use our satphone much since the data adapter was spendy ($250)and we didn't need email at sea (or rather decided it wasn't important to us.
We used the satphone when we were waiting to get his by Hurricane Henriette in Puerto Escondido to call our friends in La Paz to ask them how it was treating them. We found that without the externally mounted antenna our reception was very poor (Iridium) sounds from your report that this has improved but ours sucked. If I switched it from one ear to the next and forgot to turn the antenna to point straight up on the new ear the call would drop.
We found it mildly frustrating not being able to speak to our friends on the SSB nets and wanted to co-ordinate with them to meet up places so when we were back in the states we bought an ancient $400 marine sideband transciever which came with an automatic tuner. We could have just purchase a piece of wire for an antenna but I was to lazy to mess with it and just splurged on the $400 Gam Backstay antenna (requires no insulators of rigging modifications) We ran one piece of copper foil about 3' long from our tuner box in the lazzarette to the stainless rudder post and its been booming every since. Some sideband installs can be nightmares so I was very releived ours went well. Ultimately the sideband cost us ~$800 and maybe 2 hours of installation. Of course if we had wanted email we would have been out a LOT more money. I think the big question on the "SSB vs. satphone" debate is "What do you hope to achieve?" and you guys have the perfect setup for yourselves and we're pretty happy with ours. I was told my many a seasoned cruiser "The one piece of equipment you should never leave port without is a sideband." I still disagree with that statement but I discovered that I really enjoyed being able to reach ppl on the radio while at sea and so far we're happy.
Hope to meet up soon!
Cheers,
www.sailestrella.com
Hey Adam,
Thanks for your comment, it's interesting because the money it seems like people have spent on their SSB/Ham systems seems to vary across quite a wide range. You seem to have gotten a great deal, that definitely makes a HF radio an appealing option.
I also definitely know what you mean about the option to chat with other people. In fact, we've ended up being silent lurkers on several post-net conversations between you and Tao. But that works out alright for us, we're the silent types anyway:)
Take care, and hope to be seeing you soon. We are a bit pinned down at the moment waiting for the weather to settle, but then onwards!
Yeah, there are cheap HF radio options. I mean you can always get a HAM rig with a clipped diode for like ~$500 that'll do email (its what Sweetie has and they're very pleased) As we both know "cruisers" tend to follow the herd and if "safety" is thrown into the dogma they are even more susceptible. So you're outfitting or in San Diego ready to leave the safety of the states and you're told you need a "good sideband" if you want to live and everybody else has the Icom 802 and Pactor and backstay antenna with insulators you are soon parted from your $8k and have a system that likely works great and you're so happy with it you tell everybody else how you need an Icom 802 and insulated backstay and fastest pactor $2k modem etc. Thus Icom gets rich and cruisers get poor.
Compared to all of that the Sat Phone is WAY cheaper even counting the minutes after etc.
Basically we're in the same boat, as it were. Looks like today will be like yesterday, honking norther, then tomorrow calm but with residual seas then Sunday light notherlies with flat seas but Monday begins the week of the southerly. Possibly becoming strong toward midweek. Seriously considering a crossing at this point, we'll see. At least we'll enjoy the playoffs this weekend. After next weekend's games I dont need to be anywhere till the 7th for the Superbowl and then I am free of the only sports I follow for 9 months ;-)
See you guys soon, hopefully.