Starlink

[Riverman]

I've had mine for a few months now and never check the speeds.

Who cares, I just want the internet working.

[Stavman]

So got my Starlink yesterday, same day I returned from camping near Williams AZ. Just set it up

Back history

Wifi there is so Up and Down. One tower for entire area. Ran my Mikrotik for my friend, it ran well even with 0 upload speed while she worked, but to use Roku TV it just won't work. Wifi Hotspots do for TV, but on a 6week trip it maxes out
4g vs 5g Verizon is not really huge difference like it is at my house. Her T-Mobile is much faster up there Download, but my Verizon is faster Uploading

Starlink
Williams/Flagstaff AZ as well as all of PHX AZ are a COMING SOON Starlink area, so keep that in mind, so RV is deprioritized in heavy times

This is my back yard. Like maybe 30' from patio to back wall
Originally I placed it where my dog is, seemed to not want to work....then moved to where it is now

My visibility, u can see the bushes


Original Setup speed, like 730am

Phone speedtest

Starlink speedtest



8am speedtest with it de-prioritized I assume


Pretty happy so far.

I'll monitor it all day...see if it changes

[sgtkersh]

In just a few short weeks my home location went from being obstructed with outages expected every 3-5 minutes with a running average of about 5-6 minutes of outages every 12 hours to showing my location is good and less than two minutes total outages every 12 hours.

I can only imagine that this is because of new satellites coming online and it’s definitely better than I thought I would get with the trees we have. Still waitlisted for residential, but the RV version is working quite well for us.

[pconroy]

We've been roaming around from 'no connection' campsite to another 'no connection campsite' and Starlink has been really good.


We rolled into one of our favorite sites yesterday. Setup time is still about five minutes. I had left the base at home, but had grabbed a short piece of 1.25" Sched-40 PVC pipe. The antenna slides into that perfectly and with some zip-ties I had it mounted.


There's always a handful of people who come by and want to learn more about it.


Yesterday, one person was a bit concerned about an issue and was talking about breaking camp, and driving the 60 mins to get a connection. I had them hop onto my Starlink connection and make the call. They were very happy!

[RVermont]

After 12 rv parks where the unit worked great finally found a park near lake placid ny where the wall of trees is too great to get any service. There are some locations in the park that would work with good northern open sky but it really was not that important as we did have cell coverage which worked good enough for light texting and phone calls. If you do a google search using satellite mapping and you can not see the top of any RVs you might have spotty or no coverage.

[mjc29]

Originally Posted by RVermont

After 12 rv parks where the unit worked great finally found a park near lake placid ny where the wall of trees is too great to get any service. There are some locations in the park that would work with good northern open sky but it really was not that important as we did have cell coverage which worked good enough for light texting and phone calls. If you do a google search using satellite mapping and you can not see the top of any RVs you might have spotty or no coverage.

I haven't taken mine out on the road yet but got the 150 foot cable they sell, I am hoping I can get far enough away from trees that way. heading out next week and will see how it goes.

[Stavman]

With my DirecTV dish, and a 100' cable, I've never needed that length
So hope the stock 75' SL cable is enough

Of course one points south, one North, but I should be good

[Learjet]

Originally Posted by Stavman

With my DirecTV dish, and a 100' cable, I've never needed that length
So hope the stock 75' SL cable is enough

Of course one points south, one North, but I should be good

If I'm correct....The difference is the Starlink is looking at multiple points in the sky...not just one narrow area...so It needs a wider field of view than a geostationary satellite.

[pconroy]

I'm at home in a congested cell, and was trying an online meeting just to see how it worked. My camera is off, others are on - I'm getting 3-8 second dropouts about every 10-15 minutes.


Enough to be annoying, not enough to Not Work from the Road.

[Stavman]

Originally Posted by Learjet

If I'm correct....The difference is the Starlink is looking at multiple points in the sky...not just one narrow area...so It needs a wider field of view than a geostationary satellite.

Right, I got that

Currently in my yard. 12' shrubs 10' to west, 6' wall and some 8' shrubs 15' north, wide open east, and house 4' to the south... I get great service

So it's still a pretty narrow area at Dishy height

[Roady77]

Breaking news: FCC has authorized Starlink to provide mobile (on the move) internet services for cars, trucks, boats and airplanes. Will be interesting to see if current RV stationary gear can be easily upgraded to mobile use, but I would guess it will require a shrouded antenna like marine comms gear. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/30/fcc-...ts-planes.html

[Stavman]

That's scary..bats with mobile wifi
That combined with their sonar..they could be invincible

[Rustynuts]

Originally Posted by Roady77

Breaking news: FCC has authorized Starlink to provide mobile (on the move) internet services for cars, trucks, boats and airplanes. Will be interesting to see if current RV stationary gear can be easily upgraded to mobile use, but I would guess it will require a shrouded antenna like marine comms gear. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/30/fcc-...ts-planes.html

There are already several people that have designs to use the current rectangle dish in mobile use. It’s just a matter of the dish laying flat, pointing straight up, most of the designs out there are for use on Sprinter vans.

[Riverman]

There's no telling how many months or years before the "approved for mobile use" equipment will be ready to sell though.

[Rustynuts]

Originally Posted by Riverman

There's no telling how many months or years before the "approved for mobile use" equipment will be ready to sell though.

The standard dish can be use mobile already by mounting flat, pointing straight up, many have been doing this for months.

[pconroy]

Originally Posted by Rustynuts

There are already several people that have designs to use the current rectangle dish in mobile use. It’s just a matter of the dish laying flat, pointing straight up, most of the designs out there are for use on Sprinter vans.

That's pretty neat!!! I've noticed that my dish always starts out flat/level and I get a good connection. Then, after a couple of minutes, it tilts towards the northern sky.


Also noticed that up here, the tilt isn't that pronounced.

[mjc29]

I have heard of a new dishy from an inside source that will be less than half the size and not need to move to find satelites. It will just point straight up so it will not need all the motors the current dish has. This will be even easier to setup than now.

[SloPoke]

Just an update on our Starlink adventure:

After weeks of testing the impact of obstructions, It becomes more clear that the SL Dishy tracks the satellite in the sky along the field of view in a northern facing wedge. This gives the receivers a larger number of satellites in that wedge (instead of facing straight up). This puts the unit more vulnerable to obstruction impairment of signal by trees and structures directly north of the unit. That said, it makes a significant difference if you are able to raise the dishy enough to clear a totally un-obstructed view to the north (to about straight up)

Now to solve that: We already haul a flag-pole with us full time, and thought that we could make that a dual-purpose use. So this pole is a 5-section aluminum pole that is swaged on each end to fit into the other. It's about 25-Feet tall with each 5-ft section in use. I chose to remove the truck assembly from the top of the pole and insert a set of nylon chase nipple electrical bushings on a threaded 1" threaded coupler and slide it down the top of the pole. I drove a stop-screw to prevent it from sliding down any further than the top of the pole. The nylon bushings fit the Starlink mast with a snug fit and allow the dishy mast to snap the spring lock once in place. It is rock-solid with no movement at all.

I removed two sections of the pole to keep the height about 2' above the roof of the Seneca to eliminate any chance of hitting the roof when putting it in Stow position. I place the pole on the ground, so that the weight is not being placed on the mirror - but is keeping it firmly in place. The cable runs down the pole and into a Cat-6 jack in the battery bay direclty next to the pole where it runs into the Seneca to connect to the Router and Wired Network.

And there is a rubber-foot for the base of the pole coming by UPS any day now... to replace the tennis ball cover.

[craigav]

Originally Posted by SloPoke

Just an update on our Starlink adventure:

After weeks of testing the impact of obstructions, It becomes more clear that the SL Dishy tracks the satellite in the sky along the field of view in a northern facing wedge. This gives the receivers a larger number of satellites in that wedge (instead of facing straight up). This puts the unit more vulnerable to obstruction impairment of signal by trees and structures directly north of the unit. That said, it makes a significant difference if you are able to raise the dishy enough to clear a totally un-obstructed view to the north (to about straight up)

Now to solve that: We already haul a flag-pole with us full time, and thought that we could make that a dual-purpose use. So this pole is a 5-section aluminum pole that is swaged on each end to fit into the other. It's about 25-Feet tall with each 5-ft section in use. I chose to remove the truck assembly from the top of the pole and insert a set of nylon chase nipple electrical bushings on a threaded 1" threaded coupler and slide it down the top of the pole. I drove a stop-screw to prevent it from sliding down any further than the top of the pole. The nylon bushings fit the Starlink mast with a snug fit and allow the dishy mast to snap the spring lock once in place. It is rock-solid with no movement at all.

I removed two sections of the pole to keep the height about 2' above the roof of the Seneca to eliminate any chance of hitting the roof when putting it in Stow position. I place the pole on the ground, so that the weight is not being placed on the mirror - but is keeping it firmly in place. The cable runs down the pole and into a Cat-6 jack in the battery bay direclty next to the pole where it runs into the Seneca to connect to the Router and Wired Network.

And there is a rubber-foot for the base of the pole coming by UPS any day now... to replace the tennis ball cover.

Do you know if the pole needs to be rigid? I have a lightweight aluminum expandable pole I could use but I suspect it would sway a bit in the wind, would the slight swaying back and forth be an issue? ~CA

[pconroy]

Originally Posted by craigav

Do you know if the pole needs to be rigid? I have a lightweight aluminum expandable pole I could use but I suspect it would sway a bit in the wind, would the slight swaying back and forth be an issue? ~CA

Instead of an aluminum pole, I fashioned mine out of 10' of 1.25" Sched 40 PVC pipe. I cut the pipe into two 5' sections and have a 1" PVC pipe and an outside coupler that I use to attach the two sections together.

It's zip-tied, for now, to the rear ladder. Dishy extends about 1' above the roofline and does have *some* sway. Not much, but some - maybe 1/2". I haven't been tracking speeds religiously, and I'm content with ANY speed above 40Mbps.

So I have a "low bar of acceptance", but I haven't noticed any significant outages that I can attribute to the small sway.


We took it up to Dillon Lake, Colorado yesterday and I was pulling in 90+Mbps consistently.