Blueskies wrote:
"Gig 601XL Builder" wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net wrote in message ...
: I couldn't agree more about Stern or the business decisions but they are
: open as compared to the other system we were talking about because there are
: several makers of the hardware and that lowers the price of the hardware.
:
: As far as the 800 ground stations are concerned that is more for the radio
: end of the business than the weather end. People just insist on driving
: there cars on streets that happen to be between tall buildings.
:
: I haven't done any research on Sirius and don't know what you mean by "24
: hour" satellites but XM's two birds, "Rock" and "Roll" have given me 1000's
: of hours of listening enjoyment and are worth every dime of the subscription
: fees I've paid. When my plane is finished it will have my 3rd XM receiver in
: it and it will be part of a Garmin 496. I had always planned to install an
: XM receiver in the plane for the audio. It was just a nice surprise when
: they added the WX service.
:
:

Sirius has three birds circling the globe on 24 hour orbits, two of them 'visible' in the sky over the US at any time.
This gives them a more northern position and therefore better coverage and less repeaters required.

I wonder how many 'repeaters' you would need to cover the whole USA without using any satellites?




Well I did a little research now and can see that Sirius doesn't use
Geostationary orbit which I found very surprising. According to
Wikipedia they at least had plans to ad an additional Sat that is in
Geostationary orbit. This might change with the merger.

I also learned that XM has added a 3rd Sat "Rhythm" at 85* west. Both
Rock & Roll are located at 115* west.

To answer you question about how many ground transmitters you would need
to cover the US well if you were to drive to every place in the US how
many radio stations would you have to tune in to have coverage everyplace?

The ground repeaters XM uses have nothing to do with the Aviation Wx we
are using. They might not even me retransmitting that data. Oh and those
800 repeaters are serve only 60 cities. They are very low powered. I
don't see what you think might be gained by either Aviation or regular
users by just using ground stations.