Sattelite phone YES/NO?
 

Hiya!

Need some outside input to settle a dispute between my husband and I. What is the general consensus about taking a sat phone through Africa? We are leaving for a year long africa trip in a few months and obviously the budget is getting tighter. We now need to decide what is luxury and what is needed. As a woman and knowing we are going off the beaten track, I feel having a sat phone will give me peace of mind.. Hubby feels no need for sat phone and would rather spend the money on a dash mounted GPS system ( we have the hand held etrex - will this not do the job?).
So please anybody with an opinion let us know, if you had one and never used/needed it, etc.
Ta
Renee

that seems like an easy question but is in fact impossible to answer..i travelled through africa and had a sat phone and didnt need it..i also travelled with two spare wheels and didnt need them...in both cases i didnt need them but would leave home without it..the gps was great fun"boys and toys!"said my wife. I would travel with both..e mail me if yu wish to talk further..good luck

What a woman wants , God wants !
More seriously , I think the sat phone is a good thing but only necessary in (very) desert zones : those where nobody will came to help you before several days .
Have a good trip !
RR

As someone with both a sat phone and an etrex gps, you'll be able to guess what my answer will be.....

Etrex works fine, even if the display of lat/longs is a bit small. Most of the time you're just looking at where the arrow is pointing and that is large enough to see.

Sat phones are useful for times other than an emergency. If you're away for a long time you might well want to call 'home' a few times. Doing so on your own terms, in your own space is often nicer and can be cheaper than going through a telephone shop. Phoning out of one of these in Niger, for example, can break the bank pretty quickly.

Also, people can phone (text) you if you have your own phone.

Hi,
Get the Garmin vehicle mount for the etrex, mount it on the dash close to windscreen - It will work fine -(unless you have a front heated screen)
Use emails, fax's to communicate, unless you are spending lots of time in remote deserts, save the money from the sat phone and spend it on your trip - the money is a good few extra weeks on the road doing what you probably wanted to do in the first place...getting away from it all.
It wont be as difficult as you expect and there are nearly always people about to help if you have problems.
Have a good Trip
Cheers
Grif

I use Etrex and take a satphone, always...

Sam.

I wonder how the likes of Livingstone,Park,Burton,Thesiger and the like ever managed?

Personal opinion...Sat phones and GPS is for girls! No seriously, I think if you're going to Africa you are obviously looking for adventure. Are these devices really in the spirit of adventure? I guess you could argue that our star/compass/map using ancestors would have loved to have such useful equipment and maybe that's true. But in our technologically advanced day and age I think they're just more devices that stop us using our wits, initiative and common sense, all of which are very useful and rewarding skills to develop on a bike trip through Africa. I guess it’s obvious that I did not have that equipment with me on my travels but then again, if I had got lost in the middle of the desert would I have felt the same way…I really couldn’t say but I hope so.

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Africa Trip web journal

I wonder how the likes of Livingstone,Park,Burton and the like ever managed?

With hundreds of porters, rank disease and covering about 5 miles a day!

Satellite telephone? Here’s my penny’ worth –
(imho) a Sat-tel is a very desirable but generally non-essential item.
Suggest you do what I did – buy a Sat-tel on Ebay (it cost me around £350).
Then do what I didn’t ! – sell it again after the trip (also on Ebay).
This leaves you with a 12 month connection contract to pay for. Mine costs £200 pa, and maybe you could sell that too…
I travel wild places, but I always join up with another traveller locally when going really off-piste, and they would probably be more use than a Sat-tel call to the AA back home!
Good luck - kitmax

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Kitmax - Traveller
Desert Pictures at
http://www.kitmax.com/kit03_travel_g...velgallery.htm

I said I took them, I didn't say I used them!!

Certainly the satphone is one of those items that if you really need it, you have it. If you don't have it...

If you have a satphone, you are not going to die in the desert (at least not unless someone is after you). If you don't have a satphone, then, just possibly, you might.

Ask cool Karim!

Sam.

PS also don't forget that with Iridium your friends can send you unlimited free text messages...

Putting aside the "wimps vs machos" side of the argument, could anyone update me please on the best suppliers of Iridium "pay as you go" SIM cards?

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Roman (UK)
www.overlandcruiser.info

[This message has been edited by Roman (edited 29 September 2005).]

Paul, you need plenty of wits, initiative and common sense even to send or receive a call using a gizmo that offers a hundred menu options http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/ubb/icons/icon10.gif


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Roman (UK)
www.overlandcruiser.info

i'm working with amateur Radio.
Yaesu FT-857D with a mobile antenna.

Hi Roman You could try contacting AST service provider at http://www.ast-uk.com/
Hi Sivrvorth: This company also has ex-demo sets for sale or hire, click 'special offers'
Regards Kitmax



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Kitmax - Traveller
http://www.kitmax.com
Desert Pictures at http://www.kitmax.com/kit03_travel_g...velgallery.htm

Im with you, as somebody else said would you go without spare wheels? great if you dont need them, but if you do!
Sat phone? would not go without, But to quote the book,who do you call? if The S hits the fan, Could be Handy...But thats my thinking...................

in addition to last reply the thuraya phone i have has a great GPS and works well with the docking system and roof sat dish, great back up when hand held fails, as for Dr livingston and such like, a lot perished in desert because they could not raise help. not to mention other poor travelers that perished because there were No sat phones. Dave Good luck anyway with or without

Hi we´ve been traveling with both a Sat Phone and E-trex and found that The e-trex is fine once you have a dash mount, We didnt last year and on corrugations it was all over the place. Also not long after getting back from africa it stopped working for no apparent reason (it was replaced free of charge even though it was about 4 years old) so bear that in mind when navigating! As for the Sat phone, we never needed it but were often reasured to have it, when travelling in remote areas on our own. It was also good to be able to keep in touch with home. If we were doing the same trip again would we take one? Yes.

Hi, just to add our 20p; we set off without GPS (the camcorder was a higher priority) but our families insisted we take a satphone.

Quite honestly not much use if you're stuck or have a mechanical, but for those special occasions (christmas, birthdays etc.) when you might want to park up away from crowds it's nice to be able to call the family.

Ours turned out very useful in another situation: if it all goes pear-shaped at home, our tenant stopped paying!
Not having to depend on telecenters was a boon, and on the Iridium Africa plan through Satcom Distribution our prepaid minutes cost less than most call centers in sub-saharan Africa.

It was also fun to text other travellers via the Iridium mail-to-text service.

It's sitting in a cupboard somewhere now, waiting for the next trip, by which time the batteries will be too knackered to take a charge...

We wouldn't have forked out for one, so I have my dad to thank for the help it brought us.

A dash-mounted GPS would have been a nice gadget (very visible too) particularly useful in some of the cities (the vector maps available for most of Africa are so poor it's not really worth the investment).

More traditional navigation methods still work and have the advantage of being less nickable :-)

Cheers
Luke

Rhona & Malcom, good to see you're home safe!

Hi Luke, not home but reasonably safe in Argentina waiting for car to arrive into Chile in a couple of weeks!
And we still have our Sat phone, we will have to extend the validity of the remaining minutes for the next couple of months which we can do for us$40 a month, but compared to last time the minimum number of minutes valid for one year is 500 compared to 200! so its getting more expensive to have for emergencies!