The Ultimate Guide to Using Iridium Handsets and GO!

For an inexpensive mount for the Iridium 9555, I used the Auxiliary Antenna Adapter which came with the phone and bolted it to a Ram B-101U mount ($25) using a thin insert nut (so the back of the phone rests flush against the cradle). The mount works fine and was a lot cheaper than store bought options (it is similar to the Ocens Ramdock which lists for $190).

Thanks John. Great timing as we are just starting the install of our new Go in prep for our NZ to Fiji to Marshalls cruising intentions (rather low latitude cruising as we go back across the Equator again).

Max
SV Fluenta

Hi all,
for mounting my Iridium 9555 I simply used the auxiliary antenna bracket that came with the set and made a small teak board with a groove to accomodate the antenna cable, so that it can be fitted flush to a bulkhead, probably in much the same way as described by Max Fletcher above. I use the aux antenna with sufficient success, although an external antenna would be a lot more reliable and comfortable.
For a service provider I have a contract with the UK-based AST (www.satcomms.com) , they offer – among others – contracts with a minimum duration of 3 month at $ 49,-/ month , $ 1,40/min. mobile to fixed and $1,10/min. e-mail . They appear to have a contract with uuplus so that their customers can use the uuplus software (it’s called onsatmail in that case) free of charge.

I would like to add my experience form a 12 month sabbatical cruise in 2013-2014 from northern Europe to the Canaries and back via the Azores.

I decided on before the start but didn’t buy at the time an iridium 9555 handset and a Beam Intellidock in order to connect the external antenna. I later learned that the 9555 handset includes a holder that allows to connect the external antenna so the dock was probably not needed. However, you do need a headset of some sort if you want to make voice calls below with the phone in the dock. I would say that’s also the case when using just the supplied holder because the LMR400 cable will not allow flexing (you could easily dangle the phone in its holder from the end of it) or its solid copper core will break if it is repeatedly flexed. The Intellidock provides Bluetooth connectivity for a small headset (like some people use with their smartphones) but I guess there are other ways. Also keep in mind that you probably will not make many voice calls on the phone other than in an emergency because your voice will sound completely drunken to the other party and if they are friends, you will notice on their voice how concerned they are about your condition and maybe the call should be postponed until you have sobered up.

Because of the high frequency, cable loss is a huge issue. I pondered whether to place the external antenna under the dodger with minimum cable run to the nav station almost directly below or on a radar pole at the stern. Under the dodger would mean lots of stuff around to block the signal, such as the boom, but on the radar pole would mean, in my case, a cable run of 14 meters/45ft.
A helicopter pilot-friend told me about serious issues they had with the iridium antenna on the main body of the helicopter because of blanketing by the main rotor. They had success with moving the antenna to the end of the tail, meaning an 8 meter cable run.
Because of this and after consulting with the supplier of my Beam external antenna I decided on the radar pole.
I retrospect that apparently was a poor decision as I have had consistently rotten reception with this setup and ended up using the supplied patch antenna *inside* because, while very poor, this was still better than the external antenna. This is even so I invested lots of time in getting the absolute best LMR400-like cable and connectors I could source (from a HF specialist store which assured me that I have the best that money can buy), used “Wet Protect” in he connectors and generally did everything I could to get a first-class installation. For example I avoided a connector at the stern below deck and instead left a loop of 2meters so as to be able to take down the radar pole. There are only two connectors, one at the antenna and one to the phone/docking station.
So unless I discover in 6 months that a rat ate the cable somewhere in the cockpit locker, I have to conclude that 14m/45ft will not work, period. But this is what you will end up with a 45ft aft cockpit average white boat when mounting on a pole at the stern.
Voice conversations with either external or patch antenna from below were impossible. When taking the phone from the holder into the cockpit, it was OK.
I still have the phone (since the Go! there is no more market for a Handset, at least not a 9555 – another advantage of this setup!) and I intend to move the antenna to under the dodger – I have to do something to make my installation work.

I only managed to buy the phone and docking station while on the way out in the UK (I got the antenna 6 months before so I could install it), which, given the above, was a mistake (as John and others have said multiple times). However, AST Communications, UK, helped me substantially by shipping the equipment and the 500 minute prepaid card to Guernsey where there is no VAT, saving me 20% on everything.
The late purchased resulted in us not having daily weather while crossing Biscay.

I finally installed in Rabat, Morocco. I had no reception whatsoever. The AST support asked me for photos of the boat and antenna in all 4 directions N-E-S-W. They then told me that the horizon east and west were blocked with buildings and that that clearly prevented any kind of connection. During this I understood that because of the orbits of the satellites, unless you happen to be directly below a satellite path, the satellites will pass north to south just barely above the horizon at 8° to 12° elevation and because of the microscopic signal strength, even trees in that area will block the signal. What this means is that you have to install in port, then go out to sea to test.
By comparison I helped another boat to set up their Inmarsat phone for email and weather (with Onsatmail) and to my surprise, their phone connected with no problem in port in Angra Do Heroismo, Terceira, Azores – even next to rock cliffs blocking most of the horizon.
So begin the install and test a full six months before departure and make this a priority high enough to take precedence over such things as health insurance. This stuff will not just work!

Also in Rabat I learned the UUPlus software (Named Onsatmail in my case as I bought my minutes from AST). I have commented on UUPlus elsewhere around here and just want to repeat that (a) I would (or will?) buy it again and (b) you really do need some serious learning time, both to get it to work initially and to be able to access the more esoteric but very interesting features such as getting *any* file on the internet ad-hoc, while at sea, within just one connection.

After Rabat it worked, more or less. I have no experience with another installation at sea so can’t compare but found it very frustrating to have multiple failed attempts just to get one single 30Kb weather file email. I can remember only one instance where an entire weather mail came through in one go. Often I had to give up after 5 failed attempts and get to it again a few hours later.
I wondered if there were some “satellite pass prediction program” similar to HF propagation programs but apparently there isn’t.
We did have twice daily weather every day we were at sea after Rabat and we stayed connected with family and friends but what an agony! I felt like having to fight and claw for every single kilobyte! At least 75% of the connect time was wasted uselessly in connects with ridiculously low transfer rates. And every re-connect takes about 2 minutes until the data connection is established. 2 minutes just to find out that the rate was again useless. I must have spent a combined total of 24 hours staring at the bar graph on the phone and trying to time the next attempt while it is on the rise so as to have the best reception when the connection is up and data is flowing. But in spite of my efforts, I often found signal strength to drop to zero a second after I had hit “connect”. Another 2 minutes wasted…
This is in comparison to a French boat we met in Rabat where the skipper (and builder of the large cat) told me “why, it just works”. He was using a direct (live) IP download from Meteofrance from within zyGrib, he had meticulously disabled every single Windows update service manually and he just placed the phone by the window without an external antenna. And he used the original old iridium phone that someone gave him for free.
I must say that I feel like an idiot next to this (and some of the other reports on this thread) and I am an IT professional with above average understanding of networking.
It would certainly help my ego if a rat just ate my cable…

Last paragraph: prepaid card. We had to abandon the goal of reaching the Caribbean for medical reasons (and it also transpired on me that that would have been quite a stretch and possibly paid for with just too much stress) and as a result about 300 of our 500 minutes expired unused.

May some of you benefit from this “user story” and next time around, I guess things will be about 10 times easier.

Hello John,

I have an antenna question. I was looking at buying an external antenna with the Iridium bundle and have run into some murky waters. Ocens recommended their High Performance antenna (http://www.ocens.com/Iridium-External-Antenna-High-Performance-P46C36.aspx) for High Latitude sailing, saying: “The high performance antenna provides all of the benefits of the Standard plus better performance in situations where Iridium satellites are at consistently high sky elevations relative to the antenna (ie at high latitudes above 55 N/S)”

To me this sounded worthwhile spending an extra $100 on, until I talked to AST Systems in the UK. They told me: “I have checked the specification on the Ocens ‘High Performance’ Antenna, and also checked with our Technical team on this. They have confirmed all Iridium Antennas have the same frequency and the Iridium network is completely Global – so all antennas will work the same, unless there are obstructions from the antenna to the satellite and the set up and cabling is different in comparison.”

Basically I’m being told that the High Performance antenna, isn’t going to perform any better than any other passive iridium antenna. Since they are saying opposing things, I asked Atlantic Radio Telephone about the difference between the antennas and was told: “No. It’s too simple to complicate or improve more so than another models. It’s copper and wire in a water proof plastic container.”

This leaves me with 2 vendors (that don’t sell any “high performance” antennas) saying that there’s no point in buying a “high performance” antenna for high latitude sailing, while a third (whom sells such antennas) is saying that it does.

What do you think? … I’m very curious what experiences others here have had with the reception on their Iridium devices when using external antennas, particularly in higher latitudes? … Are the standard antennas that AST and ART sufficient/equally good at high latitudes?

Hi John,
Thank you for your 4000 words on the Go. I was wondering if in the time since you have written this article if your opinion has changed at all? Are you still very unhappy with the speed, ease of use, etc. You mentioned that the company was intending to upgrade – do you know if this has happened?
Cheers Natalie

I cruised pretty steadily from 2014-2016 with an early Iridium Go! as my only means of long-distance communications. I updated the firmware and had lots of connection problems until I got an external antenna (which required a machinist to make a mount for, since the “standard” one-inch thread on used on the antennas can be difficult to find on anything but long pieces of pipe in many parts of the world). After that, the system generally worked well, in high and low latitudes.

Though I’ve used UUPlus software in the past, this time I used XGate software (on a windows laptop).

I used 1000 minutes of prepaid airtime (it was about $600, it is more now) per year (1 year expiry on the minutes). That was enough to send minimal emails and keep a blog updated. I noticed that picture uploads took about 30% more airtime than they did with my old Iridium phone.

I wasn’t aware of the possibility of getting unlimited data for less than 12 months–that’s a great idea I will likely use next time. As I was using the Go most months of the year, it was cheaper for my last trip to buy 1000 prepaid minutes a year.

Of course, using non-unlimited airtime makes one care about minimizing airtime. After sending and receiving the mail, while the XGate software would send a signal to the Iridium Go to hang up the call and tell you it had done so, the Iridium Go would ignore that request and leave the call up, wasting airtime until you noticed, or until there was some event causing the call to drop. I would have to stay by the computer during mail send/receive, waiting for it to finish, then close the antenna (or use the buttons and menus) on the Iridium Go to turn it off. That was workable, but the distractions of running a boat often caused me to move away from the computer during the call and waste airtime by not shutting down the Go as soon as the call was finished.

An unexpected problem related to closing the antenna after calls occurred towards the end of my trip. I mounted the Go in an out-of-the way place, where spray would not reach it, and where people could not bump it, and where it’s display could still be seen. This meant reaching at arm’s length to operate it. Doing this at sea, with the boat movement, resulted in often accidentally touching a little antenna adapter wire that went from the TNC connector on the Iridium Go to a BNC connector on the antenna cable. Over the course of many months of usage, this caused the TNC-BNC antenna adapter wire to become very position-sensitive (the wire inside is probably broken), and to require frequent messing with it to have the unit get a good signal. The TNC-BNC antenna adapter wire really needed replacing, but I didn’t figure this out until I was on a long ocean passage 🙂 .

Have you noticed if the UUPlus software actually does get the Iridium Go to hang up the call when finished?

Hi John,
Please move this question to another location if wished. I looked around and this seemed the best of many possibilities. I tried searching for the answer, but did not find this particular question addressed in the archives.
Thanks, Dick
Hi all,
I am installing an Iridium Satphone and wish to get feedback/confirmation on emergency phone numbers.
Is there any consensus on the best numbers to be programmed into one’s cell or sat phone. I will include a couple of numbers I have programmed in (never used) over the years with the caveat that everyone should check the numbers out for themselves and not to rely on me.
For Northern Europe waters, I have always had Falmouth CG, 0044-132-631-7575 in my cell phone. (I understand that, in addition to maritime emergencies) they will link a medical emergency call to Portsmouth Hosp. where there are Drs. experienced in medical emergencies at sea.)
I have not been in my home waters of the US in a decade, but I believe that USCG emergency # is 800-323-7233 (I have a handful of other #s). There are regional emergency phone numbers as well.
Offshore I have always used SSB maritime & Ham radio and always gotten through to the Ham maritime net or the USCG when needed. With a new Satphone, I want to be able to use the phone in emergencies as well as the radio and wish for phone numbers where there will always be a person on the end of the line 24/7 and, hopefully, be recorded.
I would also like suggestions as to the emergency numbers one might consider on a route back to North America via the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland and into maritime Canada.
Thanks for the help, Dick Stevenson, s/v Alchemy

Hi John and all,
(This may be best placed elsewhere??)
Having just finished a trans-Atlantic crossing via the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland with significant stops in each, I thought various AAC streams might benefit from some observations.
In the SSB vs Sat-phone debate:
I still stand by all I said in support of SSB (with Pactor) comm, but in a choice between SSB and Sat-phone for these regions, you are absolutely correct in asserting: choose Sat-phone every day.
Weather and email via Winlink/Sailmail and SSB voice benefit greatly the cruising community. That said, SSB/Winlink comm in the higher lats had many challenging elements. Propagation for distance is best around dusk and dawn, which are the middle of the night (if it exists at all) in these lats in the summer. Distances are great to stations where weather/emails/gribs are to be had and some of the data necessary for safe cruising are large size (ice charts for ex). I suspect I could have made it work, but not without great effort, a good degree of frustration and a degree of uncertainty that I may not have all the data available for safe movement that would be hard to tolerate. Most times I am ok with not having all my data bases covered but the down side of Greenland unpreparedness would be high. Also, my (admittedly casual) attempts to contact both Iceland and Greenland on mf and hf radio met with no response (I was putting out as I had talked with South America recently.) Their VHF/Coast Guard coverage was impressive in the waters off and near shore while sometimes disappearing when in the fjords.
As John reports, the Sat-phone covered all the bases. With shore support to compress ice charts and turn some chart data into text, we were able to have all/most information ready at hand. It was a great security blanket and much appreciated. The ability, when wishing for really timely information, say from Ice Patrol in Greenland, to pick up the phone and call was immensely re-assuring. It also was notable that our degree of isolation on the east coast of Greenland, especially while waiting for ice to clear so we could move was profound: a big leap from anything we had faced before. Having the Sat-phone was re-assuring for this as well.
My best, Dick Stevenson, s/v Alchemy
Ps. Using UUplus was a great suggestion. Terrific people and great support.

Hi John,

I realise that uuPlus woud be great to have, but I think it might become a bit too expensive, on top of the monthly unlimited data plan.
So, if I went without uuPlus, would I still manage to run good weather apps? (Weather 4d?)
Though I haven’t decided yet, I think I will go for a PC as my navigation/weather computer.

Thanks!