Thread: TXT by SpaceX satellite

Just got back from couple of weeks in the Marlborough mountains.

I have the new iPhone 16 with One & an inReach mini.

Hardly used the InReach. Had it on, and tracking one day only, in particularly difficult country.
Will probably cancel the subscription

The Sat txt worked well, but isn’t 100% reliable. For some reason sometimes it just can’t get a satellite.
But I would say still superior to inReach txting.

Beware it’s hungry on battery. Using my phone in flight mode I could get about 4 days, with most battery consumption being photos. But if I had it on for Satellite connectivity battery drop was noticeable.

Will almost certainly get a new battery for my old PLB and use that.

I suspect Garmin will need to be more competitive with their subscription prices to remain relevant.

One inReach feature which we couldn’t get to work, but would be really useful is location sharing.
Is anyone sending your location inReach to inReach, and then viewing on Garmin's Earthmate or any other mapping app?

Well changed plans on Christmas. This weekend been have just managed to finally get satalite texting to work. (Samsung S23 Ultra) fantastic now it's working (been into one 4 times to complain about it not working) was averaging 4minute replies with the missus. 2 minutes to send, then 2minutes to receive the reply. Good to have another form of communication at the finger tips

Looks like you can now do satelite texting on a pre pay sim...previouslyonly on a plan..., so for those on spark, with a compatible phone and duel sim can add a pre pay one nz sim....bobby daz

Hamish

They are also adding the feature to older phones. I have an IPhone 13 mini and got a txt the other day to say it’s good to go now with satellite txt.
Handy as I was considering getting a newer phone for it but like how small the 13 is.

Was told last night at the local SAR meeting that One have the option to turn it on for all networks in an emergency anyway

Originally Posted by Happy Jack

Was told last night at the local SAR meeting that One have the option to turn it on for all networks in an emergency anyway

I would assume thats in a national emergency as opposed to me being struck in an emergency?

My new android phone has finally made it to the 'testing' list. One day hopefully...

It would be made available to SAR teams

Ive been using it a bit and get OK reception even in tight gullies and under canopy.
Often there is a “sattelite lag” up to 10 minutes till they come into view.
Surprising how often a sneaky bar of 4G appears for a moment.

Originally Posted by Happy Jack

It would be made available to SAR teams

Perfect for SAR

Supposed to be happening on 2 degrees next year which hopefully it will as I'm not prepared to give One my money after the dramas of when they were Vodapain.

Originally Posted by Happy Jack

Supposed to be happening on 2 degrees next year which hopefully it will as I'm not prepared to give One my money after the dramas of when they were Vodapain.

You're right there. We had 2 mobiles and broadband with them, but the useless buggers wouldn't let me pay more than 2 bills with the same credit card. Never known a company to make it so difficult to give them money.

I'm old enough and ugly enough, to want the thing to work painlessly and be cheap enough, before I'll bother.

The best part of the great outdoors, is not being in contact with the world of morons. I can do that from my couch.

I'll prolly feel differently if I'm two broken legs and a smashed face somewhere. But that's the beauty of an epirb.

I really don't succumb to marketing for giant corps, that is driven by revenue streams etc etc...

I prefer to see a product that works and then buy it.

Originally Posted by Happy Jack

It would be made available to SAR teams

Be interesting to note how they would plan to do this if all comms are down. Circling back to my conversation with the american man from Starlink about their two-factor authentication and taking a Starlink Mini plan off 'pause' if all other comms and power is down...

Originally Posted by No good names left

You're right there. We had 2 mobiles and broadband with them, but the useless buggers wouldn't let me pay more than 2 bills with the same credit card. Never known a company to make it so difficult to give them money.

Why would you have more than one bill? I have two prepay accounts with OneNZ now and even prepay can be linked? They've been like that for a long time, and when we had broadband and cellphone with Vodapain (before they pissed me off) they were linked on the same bill - this was over 10 years ago. I dunno, but I feel that this might not be entirely a Voda problem?