[RBJ]

I have a little website to record my travels and let friends and family know where I am.

Having started with a dot on a map image I've progressed to a network link to Google earth.

An interested party simply sets up a Google Earth network link to this file

http://homepage.mac.com/rbj/.Public/Navi.../Roger.kmz

and my position is displayed on Google earth.

The KMZ file is very small (4kb) and uploading is no problem with regular internet access.

What I would like to do is to update my position at sea. I've been considering Iridium for a longer passage later this year and their phones and charges seem to be getting cheaper.

Can anyone point to a good Iridium supplier (I'm in Spain at the moment) and does anyone know about using Iridium to get online and upload/download files?

[Quentin]

Hi Roger,

Some friends of mine make a data logger/tranceiver specifically for the Iridium constellation which was originally designed for sending oceanographic data but more recently has been used by the likes of Ellen MacArthur for sending position and status data back to base. I don't know about the prices charged but I suspect that it would be way cheaper than full voice modems because their system transmits messages that may be restricted to only 1960 bytes!.

Give them a call, their contact details can be found at http://www.tridentsensors.com/index.html or e-mail Helen Cusens at info@tridentsensors.com

For those Brits reading this, Trident sensors have their offices in the control tower at Dunsfold Aerodrome where Top Gear is filmed, so if you go to visit them you are likely to see some pretty wierd stuff going on alng the runways!

Good luck

Quentin

[bobetter]

OCENS is a supplier of both Iridium phones and airtime, as well as providing Mac-specific software to optimize your connection time as well as access to their weather servers. I believe they are doing some sort of discount currently.