Satellite communications experiment for the Ontario air ambulance service

The air ambulance experiment has shown that existing satellite facilities can be used to provide voice links to general aviation aircraft. Communications are reliable to five degrees elevation angle with no performance degradation, airborne or on the airstrip. Several improvements remain to be implemented for the operational service. The first in priority is to replace the window-mounted antennas with an externally-mounted electronically-steerable antenna. Others concern details such as an improved method for transmission of signalling and supervisory information and to take into account any recommendations resulting from the human factors study