Global Age June13_Gil WolinNov06 20/05/2013 12:41 Page 2
GLOBAL SYSTEMS TRACKING literally real-time. But this communications required Morse Code fluency. Today, the evolution of modern satellite communications makes it possible for operators to stay in touch with home from virtually anywhere on the planet – by voice, by datalink or by Morse Code. Voice and text messages can be relayed between aircraft, base and back to aircraft automatically. If you thought the flight phone merely cut into one of the last best ways to get away from everyone, the new satellite systems virtually eliminate that final get-away, and that’s a huge positive for businesses with people on-the-move almost everywhere at all times.
WIRELESS LIMITATIONS The age of the telegraph began after Samuel F.B. Morse created his famous code and enterprising businesses began wiring the world to carry the dots and dashes of the first modern communications system. This worked well – as long as the rudimentary batteries powering each relay station kept their current flowing and the all-important integrity of the wired network remained intact. The loss of a single pole could break the wire strand – thus adverse weather and criminal acts could cause communications to be interrupted for as long as it took for repairs to happen. Ahead of the wireless age entrepreneurs of the 19th Century tackled the issue of connecting America and Europe with the transatlantic Telegraph cable – more than 2,000 miles crossing the ocean bottom. As advanced as it was for its day, the system still faced limitations on how much traffic it could carry at one time – even after the telephone, found its own way across the ocean (again, a traffic-limited cable). The world rejoiced when Marconi’s first wireless messages bloomed into a system of networks connected across open air. With no need for wire strands to bridge gaps between communicators the world began to shrink. Yet even Marconi’s invention had its limitations: Those of range, signal strength and line-of-site signals, along with limits on what a single signal could carry. From the early 20th Century, a Canadian company bridged the oceanic gap and began routinely sending wireless messages between the two continents. As advanced as it was, however, limitations on the technologies and sensitivities to environmental problems (lightning or heavy rain, for example) attenuating signal strength remained handicaps to reliability and utility. Likewise, by the time radios began to appear in aircraft in the 1920s and 1930s, those rudimentary units also struggled with their own limitations. Outside the realm of
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WORLD AIRCRAFT SALES MAGAZINE – June 2013
...the key element in common is a satellite network, a privatelyfunded constellation of communications satellites orbiting high above us...
the later HF radios, pilots and ground communications seldom could cover much more than 100 miles, with atmospheric issues being a regular constraint. But then the Soviet Union launched a tiny, beach-ball sized orb into space, named “Sputnik” and its existence shook the world even more than the telegraph and the wireless before it. Through four “whisker” antenna Sputnik broadcast a faint radio signal as it circled high above the Earth – and millions on Earth tuned in to hear it pass overhead every 90 minutes or thereabouts, its rudimentary beeping and shiny presence striking awe into the people watching and listening. Thus began the world’s move into evergreater space-based communications – and the beginning of satellites as major players in global communications. After the U.S. launched Telstar in the 1960s the world shrank again, with live television programs now broadcast from one point on the Earth to another – within seconds. Today thousands of satellites orbit Earth www.AvBuyer.com
carrying voice, data, and graphics communications, watching our weather and peering deep into space. They help us monitor our environment, navigate more precisely and communicate between mobile and stationary sites a half-world apart better than ever before.
THE WAY THEY WORK Whether you’re talking about Honeywell’s system, Blue Sky Network’s or some other product, the key element in common is a satellite network, a privately-funded constellation of communications satellites orbiting high above us. These serve as a constellation of communicators constantly in view of all parts of the globe all the time. Airborne equipment can broadcast voice or data communications to a “visible” satellite which, in turn, relays that same packet of information to those on the ground – first passing through the network’s ground stations and then to the end users on the ground. The network ground stations can relay communications to desktop and ❯ Aircraft Index see Page 4