StarLink Moving Forward

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Neil

Are you tied to a dock, anchored out, or using it underway? There is so little technical information out there on the Starlink antenna, it’s hard to understand what it can and can’t do. My primary knowledge is of marine stabilized parabolic antennas. Flat panels like Starlink are electronically steered but have to stay within an operational envelope in respect to the satellite(s) it is trying to use. Tied to a dock is like an RV or a home installation. Floating at anchor it is no longer fixed so the software controlling the pointing is going to have to accommodate a moving antenna. Right now it seems all the installations work off the principle that the terminal only uses satellites that are to the north meaning a satellite coming up from the south will only be used after it passes overhead and one rising in the north will only be used when it reaches a minimum elevation angle, probably around 40 degrees. Drifting at anchor could change the north view enough that it may lose service. I have read that on initial setup, the terminal takes several minutes before it goes into service.

What has been your experience? I know several liveaboards in SE Alaska who would love to have when it becomes available?

Tom
 
Our boat is in a marina so the antenna only moves laterally 2-3 feet with a 2 second period. The antenna is temporarily mounted on a piece of PVC pipe so when the wind pipes up the antenna shakes visibly 2 or 3 inches up and down. None of this movement appears to affect the download speed.

As I understand it, the antenna has a range of 45 degrees without physically moving, and the phased array does the focusing on satellites as they whiz by at 550 kms.

For us it is a huge improvement on the .3 to 1.8 Mbps and the frequent interruptions that we got from the marina wifi. We see 60 to 120 Mbps consistently and have only had 2 days of poor service in the past 2 months.

We're going to try it out this summer and see how far we can go with the existing geofencing. I don't care if it doesn't work sailing as long as it works on the hook.

Someone in Alaska has 1 and said his was good within about 20 miles of the marina. Anywhere Starlink is available should have good results so if it is available in SE Alaska I would go for it.
 
Neil,

Your experience is one more data point in how Starlink works. Electronically steerable antennas are very quick to repoint, probably within milliseconds, so one outstanding question is does it establish a session with the next satellite before it drops the first one (called make before break) or does it drop the existing satellite and then acquire the next. The other outstanding question is it full duplex or half duplex, meaning does it transmit and receive at the same time or transmit and then receive. The only way some existing flat panel antennas can work today is using separate arrays for transmit and receive to be full duplex.

As far as a terminal working in SE Alaska, I have heard of one also, but it was on land. While it works apparently it is only for a few minutes at a time and seems to be a special case. I say special case in that the current satellite orbits are never further north in respect to the earth's surface than 53 degrees latitude. With all of SE Alaska north of that (Ketchikan is at 55N), any terminal in SE Alaska could only look south to get service which would seem to be a special set of software to support looking south since all I have read about to date look north.

Service to Alaska has a couple of hurdles before it can begin. First Starlink needs to launch satellites into the 70 degree and 97 degree inclinations (if I understand the filing it is not true polar but is actually 7 degrees west of the north pole or an 83 degree inclination). They have only received approval for 10 of those satellites with the rest pending a review of their FCC application. The other is gateways. While all new generation satellites will have intersatellite links, not much is known about how they will work, e.g. forward or back in the same orbital plane or across planes. The current Starlink gateways consist of 8 operational satellite terminals with each terminal communicating with a single satellite. Every satellite can communicate with two ground terminals at a time. Intersatellite links complicate the control and planning for user services because any satellite terminating a link from another satellite, would lose capacity to serve users on that satellite. Just comprehending the dynamics of that in software control of the constellation is way beyond my math and computer programming skills (nearly zero).

Thanks for the info Neil.

Tom
 
Found this website, have no idea about it's accuracy, but it shows Starlink coverage.

https://sebsebmc.github.io/starlink-coverage/index.html

AK is a big place but it looks like Starlink has decent coverage right now in some coastal areas. Better than at our house. We should have coverage and thus an antennae in a few months. We were told this when we signed up and paid $100.

Later,
Dan
 
Neil Ramsey said:
Someone in Alaska has 1 and said his was good within about 20 miles of the marina. Anywhere Starlink is available should have good results so if it is available in SE Alaska I would go for it.
Click to expand...

Edit. I looked at the source again and although he shows Alaska as home port he is actually south of me at 46 degrees and he has service 10 miles out. He says normal cruising is OK but big wakes interrupt service for seconds to a few minutes.

As far as my service is concerned I had a lot of interruptions Thursday and Friday. There was a message that they were working on the system and now my service is consistently faster. I wonder if they added another group of satellites to active service as it takes a couple of months after launch to reach operational altitude.

The download speed varies in what seems to be a sine wave from high 70's to 110's with outliers at 48 and 140. I don't see any "hand off" break in service.

I'm still hoping they will allow some flexibility in location so I can use it at anchor. They did allow a change to the marina location from the original land location. :whistling:
 
Dan,

That website is interesting but not real accurate. It uses as the lowest elevation angle 35 degrees which is lower than the 40 degrees they told the FCC they would operate between user terminals and their satellites. Here is a better site that shows Starlink satellites in real time: https://satellitemap.space/#. It uses an elevation angle of 45 degrees so also doesn't necessarily reflect Starlinks coverage on the ground. If you look at it, you can see the satellites of recent launches clustered together in a straight line. When you launch a satellite in an inclined orbit (inclination in respect to the equator) you generally launch it in the inclination or as close to it as you can. Launching in Florida you have to steer the payload with the launch vehicle until it reaches the correct inclination. Satellites on the same inclination also have multiple planes that are separated by equal distances so that you have coverage of the earth. I believe the plane you want to hit tells you what your launch time is.

I don't think SpaceX will use the Starship booster to launch Starlink satellites, both because of the risk of loss of that many satellites and they would want to minimize satellite fuel use if you had to change planes. If you look at the real time Starlink satellite view you can see all the recent satellite launches as a line of closely spaced satellites. It takes time to maneuver satellites to get the proper orbital plane spacing. Going forward I would like to know how Starlink and other Leo operators are going to reduce the probability of collisions with other objects in space. That's one of the primary objections to Starlink's modification plans currently being reviewed at the FCC. We know the concept of big sky small airplane doesn't prevent mid air collisions, so we shouldn't assume big space and small satellite will work all the time either. The only difference between the two is the debris of a collision in space stays there, disperses in all directions, and becomes a threat to other objects in space.

Tom
 
Tom
Interesting site but I don't see any correlation between the number of satellites nearby and download speed.
It indicates which satellites I am connected to but sometimes very close ones don't show as connected to me.
 
Neil,

That’s one of the unknowns in Starlink. Some satellites are not used but the reasons are unclear. The satellite may not be fully operational, there may not be an available gateway antenna, interference with an adjacent satellite, or some other reason. Do the Starlink diagnostics tell you what satellite you using?

One of the recent tit for tat filings dealing with Starlink was from DISH Network alleging that for Starlink to provide the capacity in a single cell they were claiming, Starlink would have illuminate a cell from two satellites simultaneously. That would exceed the combined power on the ground allowed on the same frequencies used by DISH for their television service. It’s another dimension of frequency sharing rearing it’s ugly head.

Tom
 
How would Starlink work in a covered slip? One receiver on the boat and one that you plug in to mounted on the shed roof?
 
Starlink could be a game changer alright. But for now I am hoping SeriusXM Marine has decent weather coverage. Particularly for the Sea of Cortez. The Furuno BBWX4 is new and I have yet to talk to anyone who is using it. Theoretically they should be able to do a good job at an economical rate. I plan on trying it out in BC next month.
 
I just wonder if the 5G and thousands of sat launches are the reason there are now so many adds for " Streaming" for $4.99 a month.

I hope its a sign there will be a price war for internet service and TV , the production folks want to get paid.
 
Maybe instead of trying to bash a competitor, and bring the Federal Gov't down on them, Dish would be better served by investing money into research and infrastructure in order to better compete with said competitors. . . . . just sayin' :whistling:
 
Personally, I don’t think the FCC wants to get involved with this. The FCC knows that shutting off internet to individuals is going to bring congressional heat. Something they have no interest in.
 
I think starlink is a game changer for internet irregardless if your on a boat or in the mountains camping. I dont know of any satellite provider that even comes close to the rates starlink is charging. Unlimited use and the speeds i am seeing cant be beat.They also have the cost of equipment,at under $600.00,below anything out there.Folks that i know who have struggled with online service due to where they live are ecstatic . I am thinking of getting a system just for the times i need service and can setup on deck. I can also use the setup while in the rv for those times i dont have cell data since its so portable. I wonder what kvh and other providers are thinking? You wouldn't want to stream netflix on KVH.
 
Mambo42 said:
That would be great news and I hope this will also apply for Europe. At the moment I work with mobile internet and antenna that is capable of picking up internet up to 12 nm off shore, but still have coverage problems in small bays or near high cliffs.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately it's a 2021 article, so later this year has been and gone

But, it will happen one day.
 
While it does work, mobile use even with RV plan is not authorized yet from what I have read recently. Thats why Dish is challenging.....
 
StarLink Update

I heard some discussion on a radio talk show a couple of days ago regarding Starlink. We plan to do some extensive cruising on our troller starting in a few months and need to understand television and Internet options.
Hi looked at their website briefly but then came here to the forum. It has been interesting reading this thread which is going on now for two years, as it is obvious how far the option has come, however I’m wondering if it is truly there yet? Are any of you Starlink users happy with the product in cruising situation‘s? I don’t know if this is the best way to generate some answers or a new posting but I’m going to give this a try first. Additionally please feel free to share other options we should look at.
 
I just finished a 2 week cruise to desolation sound in BC. A lot of the area had no cell service.We had good high speed internet wherever we went.we could do anything on the boat that we could do at home. we shared our connection with others and at one point had 19 connections and we were still able to stream netflix.We got into an area with cliffs blocking satellite tv so we streamed direct tv via the starlink.
 
Capt. Rodbone said:
I heard some discussion on a radio talk show a couple of days ago regarding Starlink. We plan to do some extensive cruising on our troller starting in a few months and need to understand television and Internet options.
Hi looked at their website briefly but then came here to the forum. It has been interesting reading this thread which is going on now for two years, as it is obvious how far the option has come, however I’m wondering if it is truly there yet? Are any of you Starlink users happy with the product in cruising situation‘s? I don’t know if this is the best way to generate some answers or a new posting but I’m going to give this a try first. Additionally please feel free to share other options we should look at.
Click to expand...

From the conversations here, and on the Cruising Forum, Starlink is working as long as one is within the 12 mile limit.

We have Starlink at the house, using it to type this note, and it is a game changer for those of use who lack access to fast Internet. It has been rock solid. We will loose connectivity in very heavy rains but that will only last a minute or so. We used to have the same problem when we lived in the city and had cable internet. A coworker with cable internet has the same rain issues, along with other service problems.

Later,
Dan
 
Interestingly the “best effort” mobile/RV service is much better the further from civilization you get. We had no problem streaming in Desolation Sound earlier this summer, but couldn’t manage during peak hours in South Puget Sound where there are lots of vacation and rural homes receiving priority service. Fortunately there is good cell coverage down that way so we had other options.
 
Is anyone using Starlink RV in the Bahamas?
 
Jc180 said:
Is anyone using Starlink RV in the Bahamas?
Click to expand...

Sorry, just answered my own question. Looked at “Bahamas Cruising and Sailing” Facebook group. Cruisers with Florida address and Starlink RV getting service throughout Bahamas. Way cool!
 
Fletcher500 said:
I have Starlink envy.
Click to expand...

Me too. Went with a Peplink router & Poynting antenna a few months too early.

I may end up keeping the Peplink stuff as a way to backfill the Starlink service & compensate for the rare dropouts it experiences, but not sure it's worth the trouble. I've been fussing with SIM cards and data plans all summer.
 
I have a Peplink router and Poynting antennas too. The setup works great with the Starlink running on POE and plugged directly into the WAN port. I have a T-Mobile prepaid data card that I fail over too when Starlink is being slow during peak hours in populated areas. Don’t use the Starlink router at all. Straight DC install draws less power than running the Starlink router off the inverter and is quite easy if you follow these instructions: https://svrenaissance.com/musings-about-starlink/
 
Capt. Rodbone said:
I heard some discussion on a radio talk show a couple of days ago regarding Starlink. We plan to do some extensive cruising on our troller starting in a few months and need to understand television and Internet options.
Hi looked at their website briefly but then came here to the forum. It has been interesting reading this thread which is going on now for two years, as it is obvious how far the option has come, however I’m wondering if it is truly there yet? Are any of you Starlink users happy with the product in cruising situation‘s? I don’t know if this is the best way to generate some answers or a new posting but I’m going to give this a try first. Additionally please feel free to share other options we should look at.
Click to expand...

Cpt Rodbone,

Unfortunately, we don't have the credibility of the talk show show host and callers you listened to. :whistling:

We only have our personal experience over the last 3 months and 2,900+ miles from Washington State to Glacier Bay Alaska and back. Except for the area North of Petersburg AK, which was clearly stated on the Starlink Website as not getting service until late this year, or next, we enjoyed superfast internet and streaming video the entire time.:thumb: Roku, Hallmark Channel and Prime Video, often when underway in remote areas, or while anchored in obscure anchorages where we listened to wolves howl while we watched streaming video . . .

We fired T-mobile internet, as well as ATnT hotspots, and are going strictly Starlink.
 
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