Communications

In my last post, I mentioned I would be covering upgrades that we are doing to Iron Lady after a season of cruising. Someone asked about our communications system as well as upgrades and since that is one of the areas we are making changes, I thought it would be worthwhile to review our set up, what worked, what didn’t work and the changes we are going to make.

Communications central is in Iron Lady’s office. The following are a couple pictures of that area.

At the top of the first picture on the left is our SSB HF transceiver. In addition to routine radio communications, news broadcasts, etc, behind the panels it is connected to a Pactor III USB modem as well as a feed from one of our GPS units. The Pactor modem is connected via USB cable to the IMac computer. We subscribe to Sailmail as our service provider. For a flat annual fee, Sailmail provides email service, access to weather fax, grib files and text forecasts. As part of the program, it includes and excellent propagation program which determines the best sailmail station to connect to and the best frequency to use based on your location and time of day. Stations and frequencies are selected from drop down lists and the SSB transceiver is tuned automatically. Couldn’t be simpler. Frankly, while it is the oldest technology that we have on the boat, it is our “go to” system. We have instructed everyone back home to contact us via our Sailmail email address for all routine communications. Its only limitation is that files cannot be attached to emails because of transmission rate limitations but this is a pretty small price to pay.

Directly below the Icom SSB is the IP handset for the satellite Fleet Broadband system. As the name implies, this is a satellite based communications system for voice, internet and data. It works essentially worldwide. There are three components to the system – the dome on the mast, the black box below decks unit and the IP handset. While it offers the ultimate convenience, the price is steep. Voice calls run about $1.15 per minute and data comes at the lofty price of $11.00 per megabyte – no web surfing here. Still, it offers an always on connection and we leave the phone active in case of emergencies back home. We also use the phone when no other service is available. We limit internet use for obvious reasons and actually maintain an “air gap” between the satellite internet port and the IMac computer (which is the only thing it can connect to). The connecting ethernet cable is ALWAYS removed unless we are using the connection – too many stories about someone leaving one connected only to get a $1000 bill for an Adobe Acrobat update.

Next in line is the lowly unlocked cell phone. We buy cards in the countries we visit and it turns out that the rates (if not the coverage) are great. In Fiji and Tonga we had plans that permitted us to call land lines in the US where we paid around $3.00 for the first 3 minutes and the next 27 minutes were free. Not bad.

Finally, we have a monster WiFi set up. An antenna on the mast is hooked to a Port Networks amplifier/bridge and we have been able to lock up hotspots as much as 2 miles away. The bridge is plugged into the Wan port of an Apple Airport Extreme Base Station that creates a wireless network on the boat. WiFi stations are selected using a browser interface on the IMac and anyone with the password for the boat network can log on and get internet service. I thought this would be our “go to” system – not. Turns out that WiFi is both sporadic, problematic and never free, particularly in the islands.

So with all this stuff, we have basically got everything well covered except internet service. That brings us to our planned addition. 3G and cell phone service are expanding very rapidly in the islands. It is strange to go to a village and see that they have a few hours of electricity a day furnished by diesel generators, no refrigeration but everyone has a cell phone. Go figure. In more remote areas, there may not be 3G but they still have data service at 56K (remember those days?).

We already have a cell antenna installed on the mast with cabling run to the office. I have just been unsure about the best way to get 3G service. Thanks to John Henricks (FPB64 – 05) I now have an answer. John turned me on to an Ericcson W35 unlocked, do everything, unit. I bought one that was supposed to be new in the box off Ebay for $135. It turned out to be gently used but works fine.

It is basically a clunky, ugly affair so I will probably hide it behind the panel behind the IMac. Somewhat inconvenient as I will have to change out the sim card on occasion but I would rather not look at it.

Having said that, the unit does have a bunch of nice features. It accepts a sim card without tearing it apart. It also has an external connection to plug in a remote antenna for better signal strength. Further, it is a wireless router, has ports for both another Wan connection and ethernet ports to connect to other devices and along with an analog phone jack so you can plug in an analog phone and use the cell/data sim card for voice thru the analog phone as well. Finally, they throw in a USB port.

I really didn’t want all of that, but it does do what I want. I will not use the wireless router as I already have an on board network, the Wan port will go unused as well as the USB port, and I probably won’t connect an analog phone. I will, however, hook up the external cell antenna and connect the W35 to the iMac via an ethernet cable, again with an Air Gap. From early research, 3G plans are pretty reasonable.

Will let you know how it works out. The one thing you can be certain about with technology is that there is always a better answer and if you have the best answer today, it won’t be the best answer tomorrow.

Best

Pete