Starlink Satellite Internet

I almost waited for the 3rd gen, but glad I didn’t. Since I am using my when camping, I don’t want to dick around with turning the dish to fine-tune the direction. But glad to see it is working great.

I usually get about 100mb up for the first 24hrs or so as the dish tunes to the satellites. Then it’s closer to 200mb +

 

Got a Flag Pole Buddy system for my SL. The system that mounts on the ladder is pretty slick. Also got the frame mount solution for the front of the trailer. Got both ends covered now.

 

I was going to buy it for my G3 setup, but went with a 4x4 instead. Cheaper and stable in this Florida weather.

4.5 months and running strong. It comes off of residential next month because I have a fiber appointment finally! When it comes off, I will be moving it to Roam and putting it on the camper/truck.

 

I really like this. Does it go much higher?

 

My wife asks that all time time...oh wait...

The starter kit (my words; not theirs) comes with two 4' poles and the mounts for the rear ladder. The ladder mount lets me set the base about 5' up, so it extends about 3-4' above the roof. What you see in the picture is their Bumper Mount, which comes with two inserts for either 16' or 22'. So I assume you can buy additional 4' poles to go even higher. The Bumper Mount just secures at the base while the ladder mount has two points of contact. Not sure I'd want a dishy swinging atop an unsecured 22' pole but I bet you could get higher than 8' and be fine.

 

So, I got my kit a week ago. I had purchased a refurbished kit to use for spending my summer in Minnesota. Started simple with the dish on the ground for the first few days then made a quick removable mount for the roof to get the best place there.

Speeds have been pretty good. Almost always 100+ mbps, frequently 250+ mbps.

Being a remote IT employee in a large financial company, I have had no issues with staying connected.

Overall, I am happy with it. I just hope it works as good as it does here in Texas. But I have more trees near the house there.


Edit:

To compare, the local ISP is still DSL and maxes out at 50mbps... Maybe...

If I didn't know I purchased the refurbished kit, I would have assumed it was new. No defects or visible issues.

I'll add a picture of my makeshift mount when I can later today.

 

Tundra - Check
Starlink - Check
Beer chairs setup in garage - Check

Let Friday commence!

 

Yes sir!

 

ElonLink running for the weekend. I am on the WA coast and was surprised to see the dish spin West for the best connection. But getting between 50-150 down and 10-15mb up across a few tests I ran today.

Ran my work VPN and multiple online meetings with video without issue today. Saved a day of vacation so the service already paid for this month’s bill!

 

We just used ours camping. My son took his driver’s permit test using it in the middle of nowhere.

 

Driveway camping this weekend. My pops has horribly slow internet so booted the SL up when we arrived. I can be 60’ from his router and my phone stays on SL even though it’s outside and 200’ away

 

I've been pretty impressed at the range of the little SL router! Mine is in the back corner of the garage I posted earlier and I still have decent radio signal 150' away in our garden even with the doors closed.

Little update from me. Going on 1 month now of daily use. Weekdays for work, weekends for streaming and night time for content downloading.

Hasn't skipped a beat!

 

Starlink coming through in the mountains of CO.

 

At za beach. Going to be testing the wind strap

 

Well all, another Summer has come and gone for me at my second house in Minnesota. I canceled my service last week. I will be restarting in May next year when we move up there full time.

I'll give a small recap of the summer and my experience.

Issues:
I only ever had one "outage." It lasted a grand total of about 5 minutes during a late night storm with really heavy rain. I had no issues with wind over the whole summer.

Data usage:
I used a total of 4,021GB over the summer. Most was downloading "Linux ISO's." Never hit a cap or was warned. One month in particular was near 2TB alone. I'll give it a better test next year.

General usage:
Just like any ISP, it just works as long as it has power. I will invest in a battery backup unit for peace of mind and as a general good idea for any computer equipment.

Wifi range of the router was pretty good. About 100' radius of great connection then another 50' of ok connection.

Speeds were generally always 100+mbps which is perfectly fine for what I need. At night, speeds rose to 200+ though.

Next year:

Battery backup
Proper roof mount
Long sat cable


Hope for you all to have clear skies!!

 

Loving the new pricing options. 50gb/mo for $50 is going to work for me when camping. And if I need a winter backup due to a storm outage.

Had two flights on Qatar this year and they’ve retrofitted SL to their aircraft. The service is free and stupid fast. Don’t know how many of the 300+ people were hammering the system, but a peer and I had seemless facetime chats with our families while another streamed Netflix and a 4th streamed a football game.

Apparently SL is offering their service on aircraft at a flat rate; no data limits. That’s a huge game changer in the aviation industry…

 

Yup starlink is a must have for us while camping. I also like how you can postpone the service for the 6 summer months we don't camp.

 

Booting for the summer. Doing the updates and making sure everything works. Guess I have to “finish the billing cycle” at my plan from last year, but switching to the 50gb/$50 plan next month.

Think I will just drop to the 10gb/$10 plan over the winter. Even through I won’t use it, the service is ready.

 

Starlink is the best invention since the microwave. Hopefully no anti-Elon freaks try to fuck with it next time we're out camping

 

This summer should be interesting. We are headed to Canada too…

 

I've been happy enough with my kit for the lake and camping that I ordered a residential kit to replace my comcast. I won't miss the data caps - everything gets delivered tomorrow.

 

I hope to do that eventually, but probably not in my current house. The dish points right at some very tall trees and it limits my speed at home.

Someday I will celebrate the eradication of Comcast from my life

 

While I am not an Elon fan myself, the thought of destroying someone's property for my own ideals/issues seems so dumb. But humans are dumb and emotional... I'm a vote with my wallet kinda guy, hit'em where it hurts.

That said, Starlink is pretty awesome and I am glad to help pioneer advancements in connectivity that will help everyone in rural areas or cities break away from slime ISP's that refuse to upgrade infrastructure to provide "high speed" internet faster than 50mbps... (In my case in Minnesota).

I should be booting up in a week or two after my move to MN. Assuming I can get closed on my Texas house sale on time without further delays...

 

First phone home of the season! Let’s GO!

 

Amazon launched the first batch of LEO satellites today for their Kuiper system. I am trying to move away from Amazon for most things and will prob never use their satcom service… but very happy they are putting legit competition into the market.

 

Comcast puts data caps on y'all over there?

 

Is there a camping package they sell?

 

They do


We have an old system

 

I think they are everywhere - 1.2TB/month. Sounds like a lot but data backup and kids streaming/gaming burns through data like crazy.

 

I am still on the US $160 roam one for camping. We work when we camp and used over 30gigs in a couple of days, so the $50 plan worries me. That said, we turned it on and then turned it off, so our bill was $40ish. I use a non fixed mount because I do not have a ladder and I need to clear the trees, so its on a tripod. I still highly recommend these things and love that we now have fiber at the house, but before that, this G3 powered our property and supported gaming/streaming and work.