Thuraya was the best piece of my adventure gear
Adventurer Mark Evans who became the only person to kayak along the coastline of Oman in December 2004 and January 2005 writes to Thuraya:
“In twenty years of expeditions to remote corners of the globe, without doubt the best piece of equipment that I have used has been the Thuraya phone. Thanks to the inbuilt GPS I no longer need to carry both a GPS and a Satellite phone as in the past. On stage one of my adventure the Thuraya GPS facility constantly gave me a locational fix within two minutes, and, using the current position, waypoint storage and relative position features enabled me to calculate my speed of travel and so estimate where I may be able to safely reach before nightfall, and therefore what beaches I may be able to camp on that night.
Using the SMS facility proved to be an extremely cost effective way of communicating my position to the support team in the Land Rover who, due to the terrain in northern Oman, often had no visual contact with me on the water. For stage two of the journey, due to start in late March 2005, we will be in a more remote area of Oman where cellphone coverage is patchy, and here we will be using the Thuraya Quicklink facility and data cable connection to enable us to send e-mail written updates and low resolution - images to the media following our progress, and to the webmaster back in the UK.
The Thuraya handset itself proved to be very robust, having been dropped several times on the beach and handled regularly with wet hands. Having used Iridium handsets on previous Polar expeditions, the size and ease of operation puts Thuraya clearly ahead in the marketplace”.
Mark Evans
Adventurer