wifi

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John Silas

Filing Flight Plan
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johnsilasjr
Can you get wifi in a personal plane? I am searching online and I can not find anything anywhere
 
Sure, you can rig up a wireless router but you still need a data stream, which is probably going to be cellular data but then wifi is fairly pointless.
 
There are in-air WiFi options but they are mostly prohibitively expensive at this point for small GA. The Challengers my wife flies have WiFi.
 
WIFI you can have, hell my Stratux and the like use Wifi to connect to the iPad.

I assume you want to connect to the Internet at large. As pointed out, there's no economical way (either when it comes to the cost of equipment or the service plans involved) to do that yet.
 
Satellite internet. Slow, expensive, fragile. Good luck.
 
forgive me for what probably comes off as a cave man question...
but how high does usable cell service drop?

In the 4 flights I've had this year after my 16 years off I didn't bother to look at my phone....well I did, but that was playing with Garmin pilot.

And back in the day when I was very active cell phones were a different bread for sure & I didn't have one. I would have had them towards the end of my active flying when I was tapering off, but in those days you turned them off before flight. I understand the regs have changed now about that and they can legally be used in flight....
 
I wonder what happened to aircell? A guy I knew used to work there ...

"Hey Siri! Tell Alexa to get off her lazy butt and ask google baba to find out what happened to Aircell?"
 
AirCell changed their name to GOGO. The original AirCell wasn't going to be useful for data really (it was little more than analog cell service). They got some different frequencies in an FCC spectrum auction and greatly expanded their offerings.
 
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Thanks for the info. I'll tell my passengers to bring a book once I do get plane
 
Salty said:
Satellite internet. Slow, expensive, fragile. Good luck.
Click to expand...
The current biz jet GoGo Ascend systems are still very expensive, but aren’t slow and fragile. We’ve had as many as eight devices connected, including some streaming that didn’t get blocked, and everything hummed along. Did I mention it’s still VERY expensive though?
 
I have a portable hard drive that creates a WiFi network. I’ve downloaded a bunch of movie to it that my passengers can access. It is awesome!
 
jheyen said:
I have a portable hard drive that creates a WiFi network. I’ve downloaded a bunch of movie to it that my passengers can access. It is awesome!
Click to expand...
Pirate!
 
Brad W said:
forgive me for what probably comes off as a cave man question...
but how high does usable cell service drop?

In the 4 flights I've had this year after my 16 years off I didn't bother to look at my phone....well I did, but that was playing with Garmin pilot.

And back in the day when I was very active cell phones were a different bread for sure & I didn't have one. I would have had them towards the end of my active flying when I was tapering off, but in those days you turned them off before flight. I understand the regs have changed now about that and they can legally be used in flight....
Click to expand...

As far as I know the regs haven't changed (they're FCC, not FAA, regs) but since the original technical reason for the regs (hitting multiple towers and confusing the system) has gone away nobody enforces it any more.

As for "how high", I've never lost the signal that I know of, but then I don't usually fly very high.
 
schmookeeg said:
Assuming you mean in-flight, yeah. It's price is.. eye-watering.

https://www.bendixking.com/en/products/aerowave-100
Click to expand...

What do you mean? It says right on the page it's affordable!


productpage-aerowave-img3.png

Affordable
With unlimited data as low as $39.99
per hour and voice calls at $1.47 per
minute, AeroWave is the most
affordable solution available. The
system can be purchased and installed
for as low as $35,000 compared to
$80,000 for alternative solutions.
 
jheyen said:
I have a portable hard drive that creates a WiFi network. I’ve downloaded a bunch of movie to it that my passengers can access. It is awesome!
Click to expand...
We do that same but it uses a SD flash card. About 60 movies and old TV classics. So far Gilligan's Island episodes are passenger favorites.

For longer trips we bring our hotspot with but that is mainly for pre-flight wx. It works up at altitude but you won't be streaming movies or anything. In the flatlands here I have had emails go out of my phone up to about 6500agl. Under 3000agl is much better.
 
Sinistar said:
For longer trips we bring our hotspot with but that is mainly for pre-flight wx. It works up at altitude but you won't be streaming movies or anything. In the flatlands here I have had emails go out of my phone up to about 6500agl. Under 3000agl is much better.
Click to expand...

Concur. It is also appears to be speed sensitive, good connectivity seems to drop off around 140kts.
 
The FCC regs only apply to the "Advanced Mobile Telephone Service" which is one of four or so ways cell phones get licensed. The prohibition on air use is anachronistic. It indeed comes from the fact that a mobile with some altitude could chew up a good amount of the system even when commanded to minimum power. That was back in the rather simplistic (but more advanced the the IMTS it replaced) system that went away decades ago. The later spread spectrum modulation schemes don't suffer from that problem. In fact, the air use prohibition wasn't added to chapters addressing later technologies.

The sad part, is that why analog cells worked at altitude (this is how the guys on UA 93 were able to find out what was going on and try to take back the plane, the newer digital modulations do not work at higher altitude for no particular reason other than there's no point in waisting transmitter power beaming to places you aren't expecting to find customers.
 
catmandu said:
Concur. It is also appears to be speed sensitive, good connectivity seems to drop off around 140kts.
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And this my folks is the true reason why 172/177/182 prices have gotten out of hand. Nothing is faster than 136kts. Plus no wing to block the signal to the cell tower. Thru Cessna magic the strut does not interfere with wifi either- just pictures.
 
You can send texts via cell phone. If you have a ham license, you can use a radio and a system called APRS to send email, texts, transmit pictures, and track your flight (similar to ADS-B).
 
flyingron said:
The sad part, is that why analog cells worked at altitude (this is how the guys on UA 93 were able to find out what was going on and try to take back the plane, the newer digital modulations do not work at higher altitude for no particular reason other than there's no point in waisting transmitter power beaming to places you aren't expecting to find customers.
Click to expand...

Is this also the reason that, when airborne, with a bar or two of phone service, and maybe 1x on the data side, I can't even send a text? Seems I need 3G or LTE displayed to get anything to transmit.
 
catmandu said:
Is this also the reason that, when airborne, with a bar or two of phone service, and maybe 1x on the data side, I can't even send a text? Seems I need 3G or LTE displayed to get anything to transmit.
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Got me. I've generally found SMS goes through when nothing else is usable.
 
I think the reason SMS gets through is that if there's not enough signal for it go out when you click "send", it keeps trying until it succeeds.
 
5 minutes after TO there is no cell service where I live. It's remote wilderness.
 
flyingron said:
Got me. I've generally found SMS goes through when nothing else is usable.
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Slow Sunday, so I figured it out. I have MMS enabled on the phone, which requires data. So I suppose if I flip it off airborne I'll be in SMS mode and should be able to text with only one bar of phone service, no data. I'll try it out sometime.
 
JOhnH said:
AFFORDABLE
With unlimited data as low as $39.99 per hour and voice calls at $1.47 per minute, AeroWave is the most affordable solution available. The system can be purchased and installed for as low as $35,000 compared to $80,000 for alternative solutions.
Click to expand...

I mean, that's basically the same as earning $45,000 amirite? :D
 
The Gogo cellular spectrum starts at 10k feet. Below that belongs to the telcos. The Avance systems are aimed at bizjets and you would likely have issues on smaller airframes. System price is around 40k? and $2-7 per MB where you can buy more and save. Or go with their satellite system if money and weight are no object...just bring your Boeing or Airbus and they’ll take care of the rest.
 
kshaw said:
You can send texts via cell phone. If you have a ham license, you can use a radio and a system called APRS to send email, texts, transmit pictures, and track your flight (similar to ADS-B).
Click to expand...

APRS is just for sharing GPS locations. Or that's what I've been lead to believe. I may have to invest in an HT that does APRS and look into this.

73

N6TPT
 
APRS does more than GPS - I know it can do pictures and texts, but I don't know what else besides GPS. I suppose a person could Google it.

Someday, I am going to do more with my license besides just monitoring the local repeater and talking to my family (radio is more reliable since cellphones are so often on silent...).
 
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