My Hamburger Takeaway - Sailor 600 VSAT

SMM in Hamburg is a massive trade show in a city with a fascinating nautical history. SMM is the meeting place for the world's maritime industry. So there are a lots of cool things for a ship enthusiast to see there. But one of my main takeaways this week was the super-lightweight Sailor 600 Ku-band VSAT antenna.

The mechanical engineering alone in Cobham's new SATCOM terminal is impressive. You can see from the sleek carbon fiber mouldings and extensive use of custom die-cast aluminum components that this product has been built to last in the marketplace as well as on the ship.

Tooling for this type of manufacturing doesn't come cheap. So you need to get the design right. And only a plan to make thousands of these components makes economic sense.

But this is exactly what we have come to expect from Thrane & Thrane and now Cobham Satcom. These designs are stable and last for years. I'd love to know what the Danish equivalent to the saying "do-it-once, do-it-right" is. Maybe I should ask a Cobham Satcom engineer.