I idid some checking on www.satellite-calculations.com and was surprised at what I found.

SAT LOCATION INCLINATION

3-F1 64E 1.67 deg 3-F2 15W 0.21 deg 3-F3 178E 1.07 deg 3-F4 54W 3.6 deg 3-F5 24E 0.39 deg 4-F1 143E 2.67 deg 4-F2 24E 2.34 deg 4-F3 98W 3.01 deg 2-F2 142W 9.33 deg

I didn't expect some of the older 3rd generation satellites to have lower inclinations than the newer 4th generations sats considering that the newer sats use scanning spot beam technology. It might have something to do with customer lease requirements since INMARSAT will lease excess capacity users, but that's only a guess.

As to the question about retaining the data, you can think of it as meta data similar to what the cellphone carriers collect about cellphone calls. They don't record and save you conversations but they do record information about origination, destination,time, duration and type of call. This information is collected and logged automatically in most cases.

- Howie