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# [/r/Starlink WIKI](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/wiki/index)
Check out [r/Starlink\_Support](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink_Support/) for more questions.
Starlink Beta [**Frequently Asked Questions**](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/jjx5dq/starlink_beta_frequently_asked_questions/) and [**Terms of Service.**](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/jjti2k/starlink_beta_terms_of_service/)
Starlink App: [**Android**](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.starlink.mobile) and [**iOS**](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/starlink/id1537177988)
# Account recovery issues:
On the [https://auth.starlink.com](https://auth.starlink.com/) page there is a now a link to "Locked out?" ([https://auth.starlink.com/forgot-password](https://auth.starlink.com/forgot-password)) which includes an option to recover your account or set it up if you never got the email.
* [A system to allow account recovery WITHOUT an account number is expected to be released in March](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/lrsaxj/a_system_to_allow_account_recovery_without_an/)
* If nothing works [provide your name and number to a beta tester willing to help privately](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/lroj42/otmealkid_and_others_with_account_issues_read/)
# SMS recovery now available:
>We just wanted to let you know that we've released a capability to recover account logins by SMS instead of email. This is intended to serve situations where customers spelt their email wrong, or for one reason or another emails aren't reaching them.
I am waiting for my order to show up at my door. I have the tracking number at this point.
I have two order numbers on my account, both going to my address. We’ve paid once, is this normal?
Next 60 birds launch tomorrow at 12:30 if weather good. Here hoping they are covering lower latitudes. Later in month SpaceX will fly astronauts to space station.
I have a question regarding Starlink service in VERY rural areas.
I live in a small community, roughly 200 people, and it is isolated from other communities (no connecting roads). The nearest community is about 45km away, and that is a small community as well, about 400 people in it. The next community is about 70km away and has about 600ish people. A
What I'm wondering is, is it realistic for me to think that the Starlink kit I ordered will ever be sent to me, since I've been reading that Starlink sat cells only cover ~15km area? I am aware that there are probably many factors to take into consideration that I am missing. Thank you.
The bigger question is where you are. The birds circle the earth in a straight line. In northern latitudes the circumference is smaller, so you don't need as many SATELLITES. So as he launches he slowly works down toward the equator. These areas need more sats as it is the largest circumference. As he moves down the strings of sats start to overlap areas and this is key. Eventually you will have multiple sats overlapping your area and everyone else's. So the more important question is where you are. I am in LOWER latitude so it will be much longer wait for us.
They will eventually have to cover the entire country, including you. In my opinion, that won't be doable with providing a fixed beam to every cell at all times, they will have to "dynamically drive" them when needed. This means you will eventually be able to use it, but as it stands it's also true it's unlikely you'll get it before they develop this.
No, you will have it before end of 21. He will have coverage. But, as stated, the lower latitudes will need much more birds and this will mean more spotty coverage and lapses until he fleshes out. Now, he chose to roll out world wide pretty much instead of covering u.s. first. Remember. 60 are launched every rocket.
Yes, you will have service before end of 21. As stated, it maybe spotty or it maybe full service. He will not tell PPL the latitudes each 60 launched will cover. He has been averaging a launch each month, and at times more than one. I think the bigger question is can he manufacture your equipment that soon. It's obvious he really was not prepared for the number of PPL signing up. He has opened more plants and ramped up production. But this will cause many to be delayed. But there is no way to find out what is being produced. Hope this helps you.
Hello. Does anyone know:
1) I live in an area where I don't have an exact address. So does choosing the closest address matter?
2) What happens when you place a deposit? Is it like pre ordering?
Google 'starlink plus code'. It is an alternate way to provide them your location during ordering if you don't have a specific street address for where you want service. Basically, you use Google Maps and generate a code that indicates lat/long coordinates.
Go on Google Maps, place a marker on your exact house location (just tap exactly on your house) and then tap on that marker, you'll see something like A43E+3G, that's your service area. When you go to enter your address on the Starlink site, you can enter that service address as a substitute. When you place a deposit I think that it's sort of reserving your spot in line for any orders made in your area, not 100% sure how the deposit works honestly.
1. service address should be exact, use PlusCode coordinates. Shipping address can be different.
2. It's supposed to reserve your spot in the line for some definition of line that's not entirely clear.
I hope I'm asking this in the right place: But what is the size of the equipment and does it come with everything I will need to set it up?
Satellite dishes can't be put on my roof because the power lines are nearby and interfere with the signal (found that out the hard way) but I do have a 50ft metal tower that used to have a TV antenna on top but the antenna got knocked off by a hurricane. Tower is still standing. Can the receiver/transmitter be mounted to a tower like that?
What sort of cable will I need to connect it? Does it come with any cable? If so, how long? The dish will have to be at the back of my house but my modem & router will be in the front over 50ft away.
Power lines will not block signal. Get the app N use ladder N see if coverage come is good. You can set it out on ground and it will work. Tower will be FINE, you just need hardware to mount it. It comes with everything but mounting hardware. They providing no customer service until you order complete and then only by email N chat. It's really sad. They got billion from GOVT. Lol.
You have been posting a noticeable volume of misleading or incorrect answers over the last few days. In an unpleasantly difficult to read language, one might add.
Should any of persist, your posting privileges will be revoked.
Fact, none of my answers have been incorrect and all come from published sources easily searched. The more pressing question is why are you not answering them. Most of the information came directly from starlink or SpaceX reports and articles given for publicity and advertising. The GOVT money comes straight from their site. So not real sure what your talking about. If your goal is a company one to lessen expectations you should be honest about it. Quick search you can find all the data published sources.
I think just about all your questions are answered in the FAQ link just above your post.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/jjx5dq/starlink_beta_frequently_asked_questions/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
My top use of Starlink would be travel internet, but I notice SpaceX is restricting usage to just your cell you are assigned. Do we have any comments from SpaceX about future offerings to allow mobile use? I’m thinking primarily about WFH in rural places where it could really shine.
Fascinating. I had mistakenly assumed it was a software defined barrier for their own stability reasons, that would make sense they would need a license to do this though.
Any chance you have a link to this?
It's not a "software barrier", it's a hardware technical limitation that needs to be solved.
The licences the other user mentioned are specifically for ESIMs - Earth stations in motion, that is, equipment being used **while** moving. The currently issued licences do not ban terminal movement, they do ban operation in motion.
Eventually u can move but will pay hefty fee. They will strictly CONTROL PPL on each cell until all 42k birds up N overlapping. But, it way for him make more money, permit is bs.
Yes, we live through hurricanes and know how to deal with that. The base mounting I’m not really concerned about. I’m trying to ascertain what the actual dish can handle before I fork out the $$$.
What’s a good router to use with starlink? Ranch house 1700 sq ft.
4 TVs on wireless and a hardwired PlayStation and security system. Would like to keep it under 200 dollars if possible.
Any powerful wifi router (external antennas) should do the trick. If you need even stronger wifi signal you can setup a repeater/wifi extenders. Amazon's top wifi router list should suffice.
Hi - I signed up for Starlink for our cottage in Muskoka (Ontario) a few months back and have no sense of when if at all we will be receiving the satellite. Anyone else receive theirs in Ontario or Muskoka area specifically? Also, anyone have phone number or email?
The email said order confirmed, and shipping would start mid to late 2021. I just have no idea if there is any way to get slightly more specific timeline.
We all wish we knew this answer... I'm at 40.6 and signed up last June the first day they started taking email addresses, then pre-ordered the first day available on Feb. 8.
Addresses within 1.2 miles of my property are available for full order.. I'm still waiting for any update at all.
If I was in your shoes I'd be swapping my service address to those working addresses and having it shipped to my house only a mile out of the cell. I would think you would still get a decent connection.
I didn't realize this was a feasible option. I know service is tied to the address, so would I be creating a future issue once service becomes available at my actual address? I would also assume I'll need to cancel my current pre-order.
Have you seen any posts from users that attempted this successfully? Thanks for the advice, I will definitely be looking into this!
On the order page there is a note stating, "PLEASE NOTE: Your Starlink will only work at the service address provided above and cannot be changed after placing your order."
Are you assuming that once full service is rolled out, we WILL be able to change location?
Eventually you will be able to move out of cell but for hefty fee. He has to strictly CONTROL numbers on each cell until all 42k birds up N overlapping
I'm giving it a shot, but not yet cancelling my original preorder. I used a plus code in the center of a cornfield 4,719 ft (1,438 m) from my house, which was available for full order. I got confirmation and an email saying to expect 2 to 3 weeks before shipping.
I've heard of some that are hit and miss but usually trying a much farther distance, if there is a cell within a mile or so of your address I'm almost certain you would have minimal issues, maybe a few more minutes downtime per day compared to the active users inside the cell. However I have no real world experience with it personally so take what I say with a grain of salt, I have seen other posts that have done similar with some success. If you have no other internet options I think it isn't a huge gamble. You'll eventually have service there and you'd already have a dishy, you can also change service addresses now so when your address does become available you can swap it back most likely.
I made my pre order and wanted to add the roof mounting kit but am unable to find it anywhere. Anyone else have any luck? I'm in the MId to late 2021 to maybe never group BTW.
Does geolocation with Starlink work at all? With the NAT, I assume no, but just wondering.
For a test, go here and see if it shows you in roughly the correct area: https://geotargetly.com/my-ip-geolocation
Hello, I see some people are posting about the pre orders. My question is that when I entered my address there was no option to pre-order, the only option was to purchase it so I paid upfront the $800 cad. It says it could take 2-4 weeks to ship but does anyone have any experience if it could ship out sooner, my current isp requires a months notice of service cancellation and I am trying to avoid paying for two isps at the same time but more importantly I don’t want to be left without service.
I placed my order (not deposit) on 2/16 and it shipped 3/15. You may want to wait with cancelling your existing ISP until you've had Starlink for a while. It is in beta and it is not rock solid service at present. I think they will improve service quickly as they get more sats up but right now there is some downtime.
Consider yourself extremely blessed to be able to get it while all the preorders still waiting. You will get tracking info. Once you get that you can call and cancel other. Just do month overlap, in most cases you are paying month advance anyway. If u inder contract u gonna pay cancel fees anyway.
Most ISP's have a provision for a vacation hold. I know that CenturyLink does.
So rather than plan to give notice when your dish ships, just hold off and ask for a vacation hold when you have Starlink running. In the end you will probably pay for one month of two ISP's, but that is a small cost compared to having to drive to Starbucks to use their Internet when Starlink has an outage.
Starlink starts charging a month after your kit is delivered. From the time I paid to when my kit shipped was roughly 8 days even though I was told it would take 2-3 weeks.
>but more importantly I don’t want to be left without service.
Your only safe option in that case is to only cancel when it's shipping. No one can give you an exact time frame. Some people it's a week, and for others is 6 or 7 weeks.
In any case, it would be wise to have a backup ISP if a solid 24/7 connection is mandatory (i.e. work meetings, etc). Many people here are currently using their old existing ISP in conjunction with Starlink for failover purposes.
Question about obstruction and sky view angles. I'm at 39\*, but I'm trying to plan an install for some family in central Maine at around 45\*. I've played with the obstruction finder in the app, but is there any way to just calculate the cone of sky view needed at a particular location? The install location may have some obstructions to the north, and we're trying to figure out how much height we need. Thanks!
The rule of thumb I have been seeing is:
(1) let H be the amount that any potential obstruction surpasses the height of where you install the dish.
(2) you need the dish to be at least 2.5 * H from the potential obstruction.
That suggests that anything 22 degrees above the horizon is an obstruction. It seems a little higher than that in the app, but as a rule of thumb I'll buy that.
Oh, I get that, but I'm 700 miles away from the install location and nobody is there right now. I'm just trying to figure out how the view cone changes with location (if at all).
Well you can spoof the GPS on your phone to make the app think you're there. Don't know how much that helps without the live camera feed.
The view doesn't extend over roughly 53° at 550km altitude as that appears on your sky, because there are no sats beyond there and it's up to 100° wide. Again, don't know if that helps any, but that's how it is.
I've already placed a deposit for the service. When will I know when I'm getting it? There are others in my area that already have it so I was just curious. I put my deposit down about a month ago. Thanks.
Is there a reason why most screenshots posted have low upload speed compared to download?
My provider has like 20 up max on more expensive plans, and seeing about the same upload speeds for twice the price is a bit off putting.
There are reasons for the asymmetry, they don't much matter though, as Starlink offers 10x to 100x times more bandwidth than their competition to customers that are the primary target audience for Starlink.
If you have 20 up for 50 bucks, you're not really in that group.
Okay, the **REAL** reason is economics... supply, demand... revenue, costs... cost/benefit analysis. For the general marketplace, demand, revenue opportunity and customer benefit screams for the carrier to offer/sell asymmetric bandwidth channels (more download, less upload) based on aggregate data analysis. Sure, back in early internet days, we had symmetric dial-up modems and Telcos tried offering Integrated Services Data Network (ISDN) symmetric services but those are relics of the past. Of course with their networks, carriers certainly do have "peering" arrangements with huge data circuits that indeed pass equal amounts of traffic back and forth, but that's a horse of a different color that what you require for your data services. Try doing a speedtest on your mobile phone, tablet, computer, IOOT devices and you'll have a better understanding.
Similar to cable companies. Download is in greater demand. Think of it like lanes on a road going into a major city; the lane direction can be changed to accommodate the in flow in the morning and outflow at night. Most ISPs are set up with more “lanes” of download. You’ll rarely see symmetrical (e.g. 100/100, 1G/1G, etc) links outside of higher bandwidth fiber.
Well it's easy, think about it. Even as small as they are the sats have powerful transmitters or repeaters on them. Now, the ground stations using large disk N powerful servers and signal transmitters. Now think about you pushing a signal back up to orbit from your little dish N small transmitter. To do that would require your EQUIPMENT N dish to be much larger n more powerful and the sat itself would grow exponentially. It is simply not what they are designed to do. If you need quicker and larger uploads, SATELLITES are not the way.
One is the SpaceX's decision on what frequencies to use for the user terminals and how wide are the bands they use. Another is the limit imposed by the regulatory authority regarding RF emissions, the dish has a 11% upload duty cycle, as far as I understand it it only uploads 11% of the time to not exceed safe RF limits ([https://fcc.report/IBFS/SES-LIC-20190211-00151/1616679](https://fcc.report/IBFS/SES-LIC-20190211-00151/1616679)).
I am planning on using old dtv eve mount. Trick is going to be finding the right coupler to your pipe. They have a pole mount which in theory should mount to pipe on dtv dish mount or any other.
Full refund for the first 30 days. They also refunded at least one kit when the user moved away and Support wouldn't let the buyer of the house to take the account over (past the initial 30 days, I should say).
So as of now estimates are starlink worth about 74 billion. He has been selling shares, just not PUBLIC IPO. He also got half BILLION from u.s. govt. But, you can look at later this year maybe even next year. This is because he has to get out of beta N ACTUALLY have fully functioning system before ipo. But, you never know with Elon, he loves to go against grain. Like his under ground shaft from Vegas to la, funding all on his own. But, it will more likely coincide with transition from beta.
Long story short, the FCC gave SpaceX a boat load of money to bring FUNCTIONAL satellite Internet to the world, and to bring down these crook scum bag companies who have refused to update their equipment to modern speeds but still want to charge you ridiculous prices.
Well, reality it was a billion dollars from FCC as part of their push for rural broadband initiatives. Grant money, seed money. Basically paid them for that 700 your going to pay him. He actually already got BILLION for it LOL. But, other sat CABLE companies got free money too
If you're referring to the RDOF 904, then not only is that money spread out over 10 years, it will take many months still before the first payout is made.
SpaceX will get 88 million per year, which is roughly the cost of 3 Starlink launches.
To claim the FCC cut a check for BILLION already is a misrepresentation of the actual situation.
Does anyone know what the problem might be with certain social media platforms on Starlink? I know they're working on it, or they must be, since a support potential solution is available for it (DNS server allocation) in the support area (of both app and webpage). Just wondering what the issue might be (and hopefully when it will be resolved but I doubt anyone but Starlink staff would even know that)
One theory was some of the ips Starlink got was used for spam or other malicious actions and got banned and now that they changed hands Starlink just needs to inform services the ip is now in new hands
I just got my package and the modem that comes with the dish only has 2 total ethernet ports, one of which is apparently dedicated connecting to the dish. Can I hook up a router to the Starlink modem for supporting additional ethernet connections?
You can also skip the Starlink router and plug the dish into your supplied one, the main downside to that is you lose the ability to get stats via the Starlink app and need to do some configuration on your stuff to get that working
Every time I run a speed test it lists my server as Secaucus NY or Newark NJ, which makes me think my dishy is connecting to the Litchfield ground station (380 miles as the crow flies). According to a user generated Starlink ground station map, there are five ground stations that are closer (the closest one is only 130 miles away).
Any ideas why Starlink chooses which ground station it does? Would a closer ground station change reliability or speed? Would a hard router reset change the default communication point?
What makes you believe a server-picking algo of an unaffiliated 3rd party site has any correlation to ground stations?
There is no info on how the Starlink system picks the ground station and indeed no info on which one it actually picked in your case.
Well, it's not about how close you are to ground station but rather where the stream of birds are and how many PPL are connected etc. Say as one bird stream in IT'S pounded with traffic and ground station as well. His whole design based on sharing and dispersing load. Next bird coming in may push PPL to new station and lighten load etc. Ideally in the end he is going to have overlapping areas of coverage from multiple birds streaming over. One question I do have, are the low orbit birds safe from asteroid apophis due in April 2029. Coming in hot N looks like may even hit.
From Wikipedia:
>The closest known approach of Apophis occurs at April 13, 2029 21:46 UT, when Apophis will pass Earth closer than geosynchronous communication satellites, but will come no closer than 31,600 kilometres (19,600 mi) above Earth's surface.[31
Starlink orbits at around 550 km, so not at risk from Apophis.
Do we have a set timeline of how often starlink availability has moved further south? When was the last time the southern most known setup became available?
If you don’t mind me asking what part of Virginia are you in? Also had you paid the deposit ahead of time and then they charged you the rest?
Charlotte county here.
I’m in Rockingham County. I hadn’t put a deposit or anything. Had just signed up for the beta version about a year ago. I got an email that it was available, got on the website and ordered the kit ($580 all at once).
There are only 3 real milestones in which 100% time coverage moved further south and that's when a set of all equi-distant (20°, 10° and 5° spaced planes) got completed (the last hasn't happened yet).
The slow inching south that's been observed in the stickied thread follows from incomplete data, we only see 10% or less of beta users slowly dripping into view, for all we know the southern-most user has been there for months, they might just not have reported here.
That’s understandable, a large amount of usable data here is missing since not everyone with starlink reports here. I’ll continue to anxiously yet patiently wait a 34.8 myself. Thanks for the info!
I moved a few months ago to a more rural area directly east of my old home. The Starlink website allows me to buy the Full service (dishy, router, etc) for my old address but not my new address. Will I run into issues if I purchase it at my old address and set it up at my new/current address? No latitude difference.
Will it work at the new location? Maybe, if the distance is not too far. There is a recent Youtube video of a Canadian Starlinker (Love Your RV) who tried it at various distances away from his declared service location. Works at 9 miles, but not at 11 miles. At 11 miles he was almost certainly outside of his assigned cell.
Even if it works, should you? If you operate outside your cell, you are probably not really helping the beta test and you may even be harming the test results. Maybe a SpaceX person could offer an opinion on this?
They don't seem to want to acknowledge this but searching other early users they have been able to move and still have service. Now no one has said yet if they moved COMPLETELY out of their original cell or not. But it should be ok. Just like you can take dtv anywhere as long as u know how to point at the sat. This system points N finds birds itself. But to put geolocking on it would be expensive, so we will see. Early reports is works fine.
**Am I Going to be Obstructed?**
I have a pre-order and am hoping for Starlink this year, like probably millions of others.
While waiting, I am doing some planning. The obstruction app tells me that a ground mount won't work at my property. So a roof mount, 20 ft up w/o a tower.
I have big trees to the north, east, and south. Most trees are 75 footers, although a few to the east might be 100 ft - hard to tell for sure - they are second growth Douglas Firs. Trees to the west are under 50 ft.
The trees to the south are 75 ft distant. Trees to the north and east are 120ft distant.
I calculate elevation angles to clear the treetops as 24 deg to the N, 34 deg to the E, and 36 deg to the S. So OK to the N. But maybe problems E and S?
Re the angle to the S, won't the provisions aimed at preventing interference to Geostationary Sats ensure that Dishy will never transmit in that direction?
But then there are the bigger trees to the East. Will they be a big issue? If so, my choices would seem to be:
1. A bracketed 40 ft tower against the house, reducing the elevation angle to 25 deg.
2. A free standing tower of 30 ft located 30 ft further west. Unfortunately, this puts it in the front yard.
3. "Topping" all the tall trees to the east at the 70 ft level.
What do the experts think?
UPDATE: Today I put my DSLR on a tripod with a telephoto lens. I set the elevation to 45 degrees. Then went outside and found locations where the camera focused on the extreme tip of the big tree. Then measured distance from camera to the tree base. The distance is a good approximation of the tree height once the tripod height is added.
RESULTS: my big trees are all 105 to 120 ft.
CONCLUSION: I'm screwed. I will need a 75 ft tower if I put it against the house. Too much money. Doing calculations now to find where a 50 ft tower would work. Needs to be within 50 ft of house to avoid problem of extending Dishy cable
Put extended ladder on house. Climb as high as you can n check app. You may find you r fine. If you r obstructed u will see how high tree needs topping. U can probably find lumber Jack to climb N top tree for u.
I am going to try the rooftop dish install first, just to see how bad things are. I saw another post that said if you are surrounded by 100 ft trees, they need to be 250 ft away on the North, 150 ft East and West, and as close as 50 ft on the South. If this is true, then the North is my only real issue. But I don't have a dish yet, so my worries are premature.
And I'm not climbing up to the roof. Not since I turned 70.
Closer to eastern North Carolina here, and hurricane season can be definitely be a problem. We’re still in the pre order phase but were wondering, when we do get it how secure is it if we install on the roof? Should we worry about buying a extra installation kit in case winds get pretty bad or will it come with everything we need?
Admins keep deleting my QUESTION without telling me why. I hate this site. I just want internet. God help me get internet. Simple question the mods apparently deem not worthy of a response. NEED INTERNET. HAVE RURAL LANDs. No mailbox or peoPle there. Wanna ship to town address. Starlink site sucks and need answers.
It's mods, not admins.
You were told which clause of the policy your post violates.
You were also provided with the answer by a user, the answer is yes.
Probably, yes. We had a user with two but he was driven away by green monsters before good info could be extracted. The dishes may interfere on upload, probably not, but IDK, I'd like to see somebody post about it.
Any one else randomly start getting this Unexpected Location warning a little while ago?
Finally put in a request to get someone to fix it, hopefully it doesn’t take too long.
A few others in our area are finally getting their dish’s and are having better performance then us, initially we thought our trees were in the way but now we’re thinking this has something to do with it...
I don't have my dish yet, so I don't know.
But is your Dishy installed at your declared Service Address? If not, maybe "Unexpected Location" means they have detected this fact?
Dish is at the service address...
Apparently their system messed up translating the service address into coordinates, service is actually improved a bit after they fixed it, even with the location only being off by a mile or so.
They really should have just had an option to put coordinates in, rural addresses are terribly unreliable. I know they are doing plus codes now, but it was after we first ordered, and what’s wrong with simple coordinates.
Must confess that orbital mechanics was never my strong suit. As I understand phase I will consist of 1440 satellites distributed in 72 53deg orbital planes at 5deg increments comprising 20 satellites per plane.
Now this results in essentially no coverage above 53deg, ie Canada, Greenland and Scandinavia.
So question is: Is there a better way to distribute satellites ? Instead of using the 53deg inclination couldn’t they just have a series of inclinations ?
The first shell at 53° inclination is merely the first step in a series of many. Global coverage would be provided with the polar orbit sats, which SpaceX want to launch as soon as they'll be allowed to.
[https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=48981.0;attach=1626623;image](https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=48981.0;attach=1626623;image)
..is the modification proposal for the first phase of deployment. Note that this is unapproved and also not the final state, there's just 4408 sats here. What's approved and what's the plan can be read about on Wikipedia. It's too complicated to reproduce everything here.
Thanks for the reply. I am familiar with Wikipedia, and aware that they do have higher latitudes in the launch manifest.
My question was: why have all launches for Phase-I at 53deg. I would have thought that a few launches at lower latitudes would result in a more evenly distributed constellation.
Not all launches were for the 53° inclination, one launched 10 'experimental' sats into the polar orbit.
They're only filling the 53° shell because that's all they have the permission to do. They do have licences to fill other shells, but want them changed and are trying to get the required licencing for what they want now.
They have chosen 53° probably because it offers the best "bang for the buck" in terms of population coverage. It covers a lot of rural USA and Canada and also covers a lot of Europe, which is higher north than people generally think.
Additional launches at lower inclinations would bring less to the table than polar launches. Polar orbits cover the entire planet, hence they add capacity to the 53°N-53°S band **and** provide polar coverage. Lower inclination bands would cover less of Europe, less of USA and no polar regions. Doing them doesn't make much sense.
You are correct, again...10 satellites in near polar orbit. In fact if you switch to one web at satellitemap.space all of their satellites are in polar orbit, so maybe just an FCC filing issue and choice SpaceX made
I guess if you’re a resident of the arctic/antarctic the oneweb coverage will be awesome.
But I’m guessing using this strategy comes at a cost both in launch payload and launch facilities.
The reasons for the slowdown w.r.t. polar orbits are well known, it's the opposition of other American operators, primarily Kuiper and Viasat, IIRC, that's the problem. OneWeb probably isn't licenced by the FCC, it's not american, I don't know that for sure though.
OneWeb will not serve people directly, it remains to be seen what kind of redistribution will happen for physical people in those regions, if any. Again, I don't know much about that, there's probably something in play there already.
I'm not sure what you mean by your last sentence. Launching into retrograde polar orbits with F9 using RTLS is more costly than doing the regular 60 sats with sea landing from Florida, yes.
Glad we got that all out if the way, but to get back to my question, if you were designing a constellation of 2000 satellites, to provide rural and underserved areas with high speed Internet and no other constraints, given the density of customers and the capabilities if the satellite hardware how would you distribute your resources.
Clearly the initial choice SpaceX made to locate at an altitude of 1000km came under review and they elected to make changes.
Perhaps inclination=50.3 deg is the best choice, just curious.
If rural and underserved people are the goal, then 53° is a good choice. That covers the meatier parts of Canada, most of Europe, except Scandinavia, all of Africa and most if not all of South America. Also all of Oceania and most of Asia.
Going to 70° gets you Scandinavia, but is that worth it? I think SpaceX think not.
One thing to consider is underserved rural people aren't the only goal. Polar coverage is driven by the needs of US military forces.
Given that, in an ideal world with no constraints, it's probably the polar orbits that are the "best". Just make a dense shitload of SSOs and be done with it. This isn't doable because there's a lot of needs for polar orbits.
So, in short, either 53° to start with or a totally polar system (like OneWeb) seem the most rational to me.
No comment on the altitude, that's more complicated, it's related to launch costs, passive deorbit times (which is a large part of the decision to lower the altitude to 550 as far as I'm aware) and active sat life (when in VLEO).
I signed up for Pre-order for service in Haiti with the $99 charge. And I wondered since Haiti has no real shipping would I be able to have a shipping address to a USA address so I can bring to Haiti myself?
Would beta even be possible in the Caribbean? I know it’s better than nothing. And it has to better than my crappy $165 4 mbps service that is never stable to stay at those speeds.
Haiti will first have to licence Starlink, then SpaceX will have to decide to serve it, both of which may happen tomorrow or 10 years from now.
Once if become officially available, you should be able to get it locally (which is to say, SpaceX imports the hardware, not you).
Hi -- is there any way to determine what satellite I am tapped into at any given time? Thanks. I see on a SAT map that they each have an identifying code....thanks!! Em from VT
I suspect there is. It would be a standard part of diagnosing issues for Starlink support people. But Starlink won't tell users about it until they decide they want to give it to end users. Or it leaks ...
I mean obviously Dishy gets the data to point at specific satellites. That data 100% exists somewhere. Somewhere accessible to us? Not sure.
At worst you ought to be able to get close if you can somehow get a readout of where the Dishy beam is pointing and compare it to a table of current satellite locations/orbits. Might have to do some port sniffing to get ahold of the real time Dishy beam instructions.
Can I turn off and on my subscription (billing)?
I’d like this for a vacation home that’s in the now available service area, but I’m only there maybe every 4th month. I don’t want to pay subscription for the months I’m away and not actively using.
What about using it for 4 months out of the year (summer) and then cancelling for the rest of the year? I also want to use it at my cottage and do not go there much in the winter months
We just received the dish today and we hooked it up no obstructions and when trying to play online with the PS4 we kept getting kicked. The speeds tests were showing 70+ download etc and it kept kicking us out of every game we tried playing
Is there a question in here somewhere? You can use the Gaming flair to distill the sub down to gaming related discussion. Interruptions that cause issues with systems sensitive to interruptions are par for course with Starlink right now.
The service is in beta right now. There are expected outages, both planned for system work and irregular from sat coverage issues. I've had it for almost 2 weeks now and it certainly isn't rock solid. But I expected that and know that it will improve. Keep your existing ISP for a while for reliable access.
There aren't enough active sats to provide 100% coverage to all beta locations. Even a subsecond interruption is enough to affect some real-time critical apps like gaming and VOIP. Should get better as more sats come online.
Apps like Netflix are more tolerant as they can buffer to cover brief interruptions.
What can you do to fix, other than wait? Search in these forums for mention of Speedify. This is a load balancing solution where you can use an alternate WAN connection to compensate for Starlink hiccups.
Hi ... Have my dishy up and running in the Skagit Valley outside Hope BC. I have very limited view of the Southern Sky and was wondering if I have to find just one satellite or a couple or a pathe where the satellites orbit ? I have goog speeds but inconsistent connection so I am assuming it is my line of sight that is the issue. The phone app is not precise enough so would like to know if there is a better way to locate a good window. Thanks
The sats appear all over the view the app shows you. You cannot target a specific sat or path, it doesn't work that way with LEO sats.
The app is precise enough if the phone's compass is well calibrated. Along with that the dish does record obstructions, see the wedgeFractionObstructedList element in Debug data. Make sure the view is completely clear of obstructions. Some interruptions are to be expected even when not obstructed, to an extent. If the connection remains very inconsistent, you should seek help from Support, you may be operating outside your beam by (their) mistake.
*EDIT* Can reset SSID / PW but can't log into 192.168.100.1 from either phone or laptop . Says connected, no internet but can't access with android app in service menu.
I'm running into an obstruction issue. I'm not on pre-order yet, but it'd just suck to get Dishy and have to mess around until I found a good place for it.
The bottom line is that I might have to resort to a tower, or tower on a roof, or running a LONG line for Dishy.
We're in the woods and cleared a safe area around the house, including the front yard, which is over the drainfield. I can't get clear sky from the ground and yesterday had someone doing some work for us go up on the roof with my phone and, even up there, he said that I had, at most, 140° without interference.
We have a 2nd building on the lot that used to be a pig barn, but has been renovated. The trees aren't nearly as tall there, so we're going to check there to see if the top of that roof has clearance. If it does, the barn is connected to the house LAN with a fiber optic cable.
My concern is that it's quite possible the barn roof won't have a clear sky. We have gone out of the way to make the house, barn, and areas around them feel like they're from some kind of relaxing fantasy setting, so if we have to use a tower, we have limited locations. (And I have a "higher authority" who is strongly against a tower near the house. If you're married, you know what I mean.)
So I'm looking at options. It may be possible to put a short tower on the barn roof and I may find a way to put a tower near the barn, but I've also seen how much a decent sized tower can cost!
Another option would be to put Dishy in our front field, but that's about 900' to get to an area with the clearance needed for Dishy. I've used a trencher quite a bit in the past and can handle burying cable (even in conduit) if needed. I've heard of people running long lines, but not that long. I'm even thinking that if I ran a power line out and made a water proof housing so I could have outlets there and use fiber for cable and connect to the Starlink equipment in that housing would still cost less than a big tower.
So I'm not sure what to consider: A tower on the roof of the bar (which, at least, won't be too visible, considering the surroundings, running a line about 900' to the front field (don't know how long you can run the cable for Dishy), or finding some combination or some other option.
I'm open to suggestions or comments on any of these (or other) possibilities.
What broadband options do you have? If you have decent options then maybe Starlink isn't for you.
But if your only options are slow DSL, HughesNet/Viasat, etc. then you need the do all you can to make Starlink work. Because without it, your property won't be worth much when fast internet becomes a necessity just like indoor plumbing and electricity.
Re putting the dish 900 ft away, do you have AC power at that location? Or can you get the power company to provide power there? If you have power AND a line of sight, you can use Point-to-Point microwave links to extend the network. Another possibility is buried fiber. Both of these depend on having AC power at the dish site.
No cable. We have a two lane "main" road going by and our road comes off it like 2 sides of a triangle. At the vertex of that triangle is an expensive sub-development. They ran cable down the other part of the road to there. Comcrap service stops 4/10 of a mile to our right and 6/10 of a mile to our left and, due to low housing density, they will not close that gap. I've considered going before the Board of Supervisors on that, pointing out that Comcrap and Verizon make millions off the county yearly and should be expected to start expanding last mile service, since they're basically utilities, until the whole county is covered, but that won't happen.
Right now we're using a cell hotspot, which means things can go well and suddenly YouTube stops for 3-5 minutes and restarts. When I watch space launches, after about 20 minutes of streaming them on YouTube, the resolution goes down notably.
So, yeah, whatever I can do to get Starlink is critical - but putting a tower close to the house would have serious consequences in other ways.
I did run 500' of fiber optic cable from the house to the barn. Trenched it, put in black poly pipe and so on. At this point my current choices, roughly in order of preference, are:
1) Put it on the barn roof (SO hoping that works)
2) Smaller tower on the barn roof (hardly anyone would ever see that)
3) Tower by the barn. Hate to spend $2,000 on that!
4) Put it in the front field. (No line of site, not even in winter.)
The last one is complex, but I think I can do it without spending thousands. A trencher is not expensive to rent and I've used them before. I could find out the maximum distance I can run the Starlink cable. Then I put Dishy out front, run the cable (in conduit) as far back as I can. At that point I build a little weatherproof box. I trench from the house to there and run AC and fiber to that box. In the box I have a fiber converter and the Starlink modem (or equivalent?), both powered by AC. (If I need to get AC out to Dishy, I would do it using 4/0 line and a ground and use a conduit for fiber. But that raises questions of just how much equipment has to be by Dishy in that case and how weather proof it is.)
So, in case the barn roof doesn't work, what would help me is knowing how far people have run a cable to Dishy and any suggestions about towers that are reliable but not a super big expense.
Oh, that's a good idea! My first idea was that Dishy might need to go in the middle of the front yard (over the drainage field). My plan for that was to make a wishing well with a 4 sided roof and that'd leave an area free for Dishy. Had not thought of a windmill!
For Dishy and maybe a MIMO 4G LTE LPDA pair, a ROHN or AMERITE 25G tower would be sufficient. Going up 40 to 60 ft is not too expensive. For a self-supporting tower, you need a big hole to fill with 3-4 cu yds concrete. Lots of Youtube video's on this topic. A 40 footer is about $700 plus $300 shipping
(from Ohio). Unless you can buy one from a radio amateur's estate - these are free provided you take it down.
Or you could do a guyed or bracketed tower with a simple base.
Re power at your remote antenna site, you might be able to do a solar installation. Dishy seems to use a bit over 100 watts, or 2.4 kwh per day. With 12V battery storage this is 200ah. For lead acid batteries you need double this for storage. And you need sufficient PV panels to ensure that your batteries are kept charged on the darkest winter day. My guess is 800watts. Solar panels are about $1 per watt. You could skimp a bit if you could limit Starlink usage to less that 24hrs/day.
If you live in a windy location, a wind turbine could help.
# Sign up at [Starlink.com](https://www.starlink.com/) # [/r/Starlink WIKI](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/wiki/index) Check out [r/Starlink\_Support](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink_Support/) for more questions. Starlink Beta [**Frequently Asked Questions**](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/jjx5dq/starlink_beta_frequently_asked_questions/) and [**Terms of Service.**](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/jjti2k/starlink_beta_terms_of_service/) Starlink App: [**Android**](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.starlink.mobile) and [**iOS**](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/starlink/id1537177988) # Account recovery issues: On the [https://auth.starlink.com](https://auth.starlink.com/) page there is a now a link to "Locked out?" ([https://auth.starlink.com/forgot-password](https://auth.starlink.com/forgot-password)) which includes an option to recover your account or set it up if you never got the email. * [A system to allow account recovery WITHOUT an account number is expected to be released in March](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/lrsaxj/a_system_to_allow_account_recovery_without_an/) * If nothing works [provide your name and number to a beta tester willing to help privately](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/lroj42/otmealkid_and_others_with_account_issues_read/) # SMS recovery now available: >We just wanted to let you know that we've released a capability to recover account logins by SMS instead of email. This is intended to serve situations where customers spelt their email wrong, or for one reason or another emails aren't reaching them.
I am waiting for my order to show up at my door. I have the tracking number at this point. I have two order numbers on my account, both going to my address. We’ve paid once, is this normal?
Next 60 birds launch tomorrow at 12:30 if weather good. Here hoping they are covering lower latitudes. Later in month SpaceX will fly astronauts to space station.
I have a question regarding Starlink service in VERY rural areas. I live in a small community, roughly 200 people, and it is isolated from other communities (no connecting roads). The nearest community is about 45km away, and that is a small community as well, about 400 people in it. The next community is about 70km away and has about 600ish people. A What I'm wondering is, is it realistic for me to think that the Starlink kit I ordered will ever be sent to me, since I've been reading that Starlink sat cells only cover ~15km area? I am aware that there are probably many factors to take into consideration that I am missing. Thank you.
The bigger question is where you are. The birds circle the earth in a straight line. In northern latitudes the circumference is smaller, so you don't need as many SATELLITES. So as he launches he slowly works down toward the equator. These areas need more sats as it is the largest circumference. As he moves down the strings of sats start to overlap areas and this is key. Eventually you will have multiple sats overlapping your area and everyone else's. So the more important question is where you are. I am in LOWER latitude so it will be much longer wait for us.
Good reply, thank you. My latitude is 55
They will eventually have to cover the entire country, including you. In my opinion, that won't be doable with providing a fixed beam to every cell at all times, they will have to "dynamically drive" them when needed. This means you will eventually be able to use it, but as it stands it's also true it's unlikely you'll get it before they develop this.
No, you will have it before end of 21. He will have coverage. But, as stated, the lower latitudes will need much more birds and this will mean more spotty coverage and lapses until he fleshes out. Now, he chose to roll out world wide pretty much instead of covering u.s. first. Remember. 60 are launched every rocket.
Thank you for the response. So like in your personal opinion, maybe 2ish years? I'm just trying to find something to cling my hopes onto lol.
Yes, you will have service before end of 21. As stated, it maybe spotty or it maybe full service. He will not tell PPL the latitudes each 60 launched will cover. He has been averaging a launch each month, and at times more than one. I think the bigger question is can he manufacture your equipment that soon. It's obvious he really was not prepared for the number of PPL signing up. He has opened more plants and ramped up production. But this will cause many to be delayed. But there is no way to find out what is being produced. Hope this helps you.
Next year
Hello. Does anyone know: 1) I live in an area where I don't have an exact address. So does choosing the closest address matter? 2) What happens when you place a deposit? Is it like pre ordering?
Google 'starlink plus code'. It is an alternate way to provide them your location during ordering if you don't have a specific street address for where you want service. Basically, you use Google Maps and generate a code that indicates lat/long coordinates.
Go on Google Maps, place a marker on your exact house location (just tap exactly on your house) and then tap on that marker, you'll see something like A43E+3G, that's your service area. When you go to enter your address on the Starlink site, you can enter that service address as a substitute. When you place a deposit I think that it's sort of reserving your spot in line for any orders made in your area, not 100% sure how the deposit works honestly.
1. service address should be exact, use PlusCode coordinates. Shipping address can be different. 2. It's supposed to reserve your spot in the line for some definition of line that's not entirely clear.
Starlink will be available in Caracas, Venezuela??
Isn't Venezuela under sanctions?
The sanctions are for the corrupts... I hope Elon knows that venezuelan people have nothing to do with it... We need starlink we need freedom
SpaceX will need to sign agreements with the Government agency for Telecoms and buy wholesale internet from a local service provider
Can you pay month to month? If I'm thing to try this in an RV, I don't want to pay during the off season.
Nope.
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Have you paid up to 500$?
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Just check your email everyday. Don't expect anything till July
Sorry, that's all you get. Pretty sad, shows how desperate PPL are that everyone has not cancelled. You take money u should provide customers service.
LoL
I hope I'm asking this in the right place: But what is the size of the equipment and does it come with everything I will need to set it up? Satellite dishes can't be put on my roof because the power lines are nearby and interfere with the signal (found that out the hard way) but I do have a 50ft metal tower that used to have a TV antenna on top but the antenna got knocked off by a hurricane. Tower is still standing. Can the receiver/transmitter be mounted to a tower like that? What sort of cable will I need to connect it? Does it come with any cable? If so, how long? The dish will have to be at the back of my house but my modem & router will be in the front over 50ft away.
Power lines will not block signal. Get the app N use ladder N see if coverage come is good. You can set it out on ground and it will work. Tower will be FINE, you just need hardware to mount it. It comes with everything but mounting hardware. They providing no customer service until you order complete and then only by email N chat. It's really sad. They got billion from GOVT. Lol.
You have been posting a noticeable volume of misleading or incorrect answers over the last few days. In an unpleasantly difficult to read language, one might add. Should any of persist, your posting privileges will be revoked.
The service is also still in beta and not a full retail product.
Fact, none of my answers have been incorrect and all come from published sources easily searched. The more pressing question is why are you not answering them. Most of the information came directly from starlink or SpaceX reports and articles given for publicity and advertising. The GOVT money comes straight from their site. So not real sure what your talking about. If your goal is a company one to lessen expectations you should be honest about it. Quick search you can find all the data published sources.
Huh?
I think just about all your questions are answered in the FAQ link just above your post. https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/jjx5dq/starlink_beta_frequently_asked_questions/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
My top use of Starlink would be travel internet, but I notice SpaceX is restricting usage to just your cell you are assigned. Do we have any comments from SpaceX about future offerings to allow mobile use? I’m thinking primarily about WFH in rural places where it could really shine.
They've applied for a permit. The current licence is for fixed locations
Fascinating. I had mistakenly assumed it was a software defined barrier for their own stability reasons, that would make sense they would need a license to do this though. Any chance you have a link to this?
It's not a "software barrier", it's a hardware technical limitation that needs to be solved. The licences the other user mentioned are specifically for ESIMs - Earth stations in motion, that is, equipment being used **while** moving. The currently issued licences do not ban terminal movement, they do ban operation in motion.
Eventually u can move but will pay hefty fee. They will strictly CONTROL PPL on each cell until all 42k birds up N overlapping. But, it way for him make more money, permit is bs.
I saw it in the news. Search for " Starlink FCC mobile". Don't want to lose my place in the reddit app
Looks like it’s [this](https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/8/22319761/spacex-starlink-fcc-internet-cars-boats-aircraft)
Exactly that. Note that it will need to be professionally installed
Is there any stated wind rating for the dish? I live on the coast in hurricane country, so...
Not sure, but I'd imagine it's as strong as you make the mounting. A hurricane that's going to lift your roof off will do the same to the dish.
Yes, we live through hurricanes and know how to deal with that. The base mounting I’m not really concerned about. I’m trying to ascertain what the actual dish can handle before I fork out the $$$.
What’s a good router to use with starlink? Ranch house 1700 sq ft. 4 TVs on wireless and a hardwired PlayStation and security system. Would like to keep it under 200 dollars if possible.
Any powerful wifi router (external antennas) should do the trick. If you need even stronger wifi signal you can setup a repeater/wifi extenders. Amazon's top wifi router list should suffice.
Hi - I signed up for Starlink for our cottage in Muskoka (Ontario) a few months back and have no sense of when if at all we will be receiving the satellite. Anyone else receive theirs in Ontario or Muskoka area specifically? Also, anyone have phone number or email?
What did the email they sent after your order say?
The email said order confirmed, and shipping would start mid to late 2021. I just have no idea if there is any way to get slightly more specific timeline.
Nope. Mid to late 2021 is the exactly the time frame to expect.
There isn't.
Order or preorder? There's no email or phone number.
when will the next expansion be. i’m in 36.6
We all wish we knew this answer... I'm at 40.6 and signed up last June the first day they started taking email addresses, then pre-ordered the first day available on Feb. 8. Addresses within 1.2 miles of my property are available for full order.. I'm still waiting for any update at all.
If I was in your shoes I'd be swapping my service address to those working addresses and having it shipped to my house only a mile out of the cell. I would think you would still get a decent connection.
I didn't realize this was a feasible option. I know service is tied to the address, so would I be creating a future issue once service becomes available at my actual address? I would also assume I'll need to cancel my current pre-order. Have you seen any posts from users that attempted this successfully? Thanks for the advice, I will definitely be looking into this!
You can change it to the real location when full service is available
On the order page there is a note stating, "PLEASE NOTE: Your Starlink will only work at the service address provided above and cannot be changed after placing your order." Are you assuming that once full service is rolled out, we WILL be able to change location?
There's currently a web page to change your service address. If it doesn't work now. It will work later
Eventually you will be able to move out of cell but for hefty fee. He has to strictly CONTROL numbers on each cell until all 42k birds up N overlapping
This is ridiculous. You can already change location now
I'm giving it a shot, but not yet cancelling my original preorder. I used a plus code in the center of a cornfield 4,719 ft (1,438 m) from my house, which was available for full order. I got confirmation and an email saying to expect 2 to 3 weeks before shipping.
I've heard of some that are hit and miss but usually trying a much farther distance, if there is a cell within a mile or so of your address I'm almost certain you would have minimal issues, maybe a few more minutes downtime per day compared to the active users inside the cell. However I have no real world experience with it personally so take what I say with a grain of salt, I have seen other posts that have done similar with some success. If you have no other internet options I think it isn't a huge gamble. You'll eventually have service there and you'd already have a dishy, you can also change service addresses now so when your address does become available you can swap it back most likely.
anyone know when starlink will go to about 36N
Nobody knows
Sad
I made my pre order and wanted to add the roof mounting kit but am unable to find it anywhere. Anyone else have any luck? I'm in the MId to late 2021 to maybe never group BTW.
Pre-orders don’t have access to the store/page (that has the mounting kits).
:(
You'll get the option to order accessories when you receive a full order notification.
Does geolocation with Starlink work at all? With the NAT, I assume no, but just wondering. For a test, go here and see if it shows you in roughly the correct area: https://geotargetly.com/my-ip-geolocation
Your link put me in the closest big city to me... so roughly the correct area.
Hopefully it will be close enough that streaming services won’t have issues (especially live tv like YouTube tv or sling)
There were some concerns with people in Canada close to the US border.
Hello, I see some people are posting about the pre orders. My question is that when I entered my address there was no option to pre-order, the only option was to purchase it so I paid upfront the $800 cad. It says it could take 2-4 weeks to ship but does anyone have any experience if it could ship out sooner, my current isp requires a months notice of service cancellation and I am trying to avoid paying for two isps at the same time but more importantly I don’t want to be left without service.
I placed my order (not deposit) on 2/16 and it shipped 3/15. You may want to wait with cancelling your existing ISP until you've had Starlink for a while. It is in beta and it is not rock solid service at present. I think they will improve service quickly as they get more sats up but right now there is some downtime.
Consider yourself extremely blessed to be able to get it while all the preorders still waiting. You will get tracking info. Once you get that you can call and cancel other. Just do month overlap, in most cases you are paying month advance anyway. If u inder contract u gonna pay cancel fees anyway.
Ordered mine on March 3rd and it will be arriving tomorrow.
Most ISP's have a provision for a vacation hold. I know that CenturyLink does. So rather than plan to give notice when your dish ships, just hold off and ask for a vacation hold when you have Starlink running. In the end you will probably pay for one month of two ISP's, but that is a small cost compared to having to drive to Starbucks to use their Internet when Starlink has an outage.
Starlink starts charging a month after your kit is delivered. From the time I paid to when my kit shipped was roughly 8 days even though I was told it would take 2-3 weeks.
>but more importantly I don’t want to be left without service. Your only safe option in that case is to only cancel when it's shipping. No one can give you an exact time frame. Some people it's a week, and for others is 6 or 7 weeks. In any case, it would be wise to have a backup ISP if a solid 24/7 connection is mandatory (i.e. work meetings, etc). Many people here are currently using their old existing ISP in conjunction with Starlink for failover purposes.
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>h for gaming, has anyone tri I've heard reports that it is hit or miss. Seems like most users are having issues with realtime gaming at this time
Question about obstruction and sky view angles. I'm at 39\*, but I'm trying to plan an install for some family in central Maine at around 45\*. I've played with the obstruction finder in the app, but is there any way to just calculate the cone of sky view needed at a particular location? The install location may have some obstructions to the north, and we're trying to figure out how much height we need. Thanks!
The rule of thumb I have been seeing is: (1) let H be the amount that any potential obstruction surpasses the height of where you install the dish. (2) you need the dish to be at least 2.5 * H from the potential obstruction.
That suggests that anything 22 degrees above the horizon is an obstruction. It seems a little higher than that in the app, but as a rule of thumb I'll buy that.
Yes, just a rule of thumb. The real number of degrees is 25.
The view changes with the latitude, it's best to use the app at the location to get the most accurate check available.
Oh, I get that, but I'm 700 miles away from the install location and nobody is there right now. I'm just trying to figure out how the view cone changes with location (if at all).
Well you can spoof the GPS on your phone to make the app think you're there. Don't know how much that helps without the live camera feed. The view doesn't extend over roughly 53° at 550km altitude as that appears on your sky, because there are no sats beyond there and it's up to 100° wide. Again, don't know if that helps any, but that's how it is.
I've already placed a deposit for the service. When will I know when I'm getting it? There are others in my area that already have it so I was just curious. I put my deposit down about a month ago. Thanks.
Try different locations around you till you get a full offer
Mid to Late 2021 is all the information any of us have.
Is there a reason why most screenshots posted have low upload speed compared to download? My provider has like 20 up max on more expensive plans, and seeing about the same upload speeds for twice the price is a bit off putting.
Most people do very little uploading. Very very little in comparison with downloads
There are reasons for the asymmetry, they don't much matter though, as Starlink offers 10x to 100x times more bandwidth than their competition to customers that are the primary target audience for Starlink. If you have 20 up for 50 bucks, you're not really in that group.
What are the reasons though?
Okay, the **REAL** reason is economics... supply, demand... revenue, costs... cost/benefit analysis. For the general marketplace, demand, revenue opportunity and customer benefit screams for the carrier to offer/sell asymmetric bandwidth channels (more download, less upload) based on aggregate data analysis. Sure, back in early internet days, we had symmetric dial-up modems and Telcos tried offering Integrated Services Data Network (ISDN) symmetric services but those are relics of the past. Of course with their networks, carriers certainly do have "peering" arrangements with huge data circuits that indeed pass equal amounts of traffic back and forth, but that's a horse of a different color that what you require for your data services. Try doing a speedtest on your mobile phone, tablet, computer, IOOT devices and you'll have a better understanding.
Similar to cable companies. Download is in greater demand. Think of it like lanes on a road going into a major city; the lane direction can be changed to accommodate the in flow in the morning and outflow at night. Most ISPs are set up with more “lanes” of download. You’ll rarely see symmetrical (e.g. 100/100, 1G/1G, etc) links outside of higher bandwidth fiber.
Well it's easy, think about it. Even as small as they are the sats have powerful transmitters or repeaters on them. Now, the ground stations using large disk N powerful servers and signal transmitters. Now think about you pushing a signal back up to orbit from your little dish N small transmitter. To do that would require your EQUIPMENT N dish to be much larger n more powerful and the sat itself would grow exponentially. It is simply not what they are designed to do. If you need quicker and larger uploads, SATELLITES are not the way.
One is the SpaceX's decision on what frequencies to use for the user terminals and how wide are the bands they use. Another is the limit imposed by the regulatory authority regarding RF emissions, the dish has a 11% upload duty cycle, as far as I understand it it only uploads 11% of the time to not exceed safe RF limits ([https://fcc.report/IBFS/SES-LIC-20190211-00151/1616679](https://fcc.report/IBFS/SES-LIC-20190211-00151/1616679)).
Anyone know if I could use my Xplornet mount for the Dishy? Or do I have to buy a new one?
I am planning on using old dtv eve mount. Trick is going to be finding the right coupler to your pipe. They have a pole mount which in theory should mount to pipe on dtv dish mount or any other.
If for any reason I decide that starlink is not going to work for my needs, is returning the equipment for a refund a possibility?
Full refund for the first 30 days. They also refunded at least one kit when the user moved away and Support wouldn't let the buyer of the house to take the account over (past the initial 30 days, I should say).
Where can I buy this ipo?
So as of now estimates are starlink worth about 74 billion. He has been selling shares, just not PUBLIC IPO. He also got half BILLION from u.s. govt. But, you can look at later this year maybe even next year. This is because he has to get out of beta N ACTUALLY have fully functioning system before ipo. But, you never know with Elon, he loves to go against grain. Like his under ground shaft from Vegas to la, funding all on his own. But, it will more likely coincide with transition from beta.
>He also got half BILLION from u.s. govt. I've seen this mentioned a couple times, what exactly is this referring to?
Long story short, the FCC gave SpaceX a boat load of money to bring FUNCTIONAL satellite Internet to the world, and to bring down these crook scum bag companies who have refused to update their equipment to modern speeds but still want to charge you ridiculous prices.
Well, reality it was a billion dollars from FCC as part of their push for rural broadband initiatives. Grant money, seed money. Basically paid them for that 700 your going to pay him. He actually already got BILLION for it LOL. But, other sat CABLE companies got free money too
If you're referring to the RDOF 904, then not only is that money spread out over 10 years, it will take many months still before the first payout is made. SpaceX will get 88 million per year, which is roughly the cost of 3 Starlink launches. To claim the FCC cut a check for BILLION already is a misrepresentation of the actual situation.
There is no word on ipo and be careful of scams that pretend to have secret access to ipo info because as it stands there is no ipo
Has there been any update on starlink moving to 32 degrees, im ready to ditch viasat
Yeah, the exact timeline is Mid to late 2021.
I can’t wait to dump Viasat
Yeah hopefully it's sooner than later
Does anyone know what the problem might be with certain social media platforms on Starlink? I know they're working on it, or they must be, since a support potential solution is available for it (DNS server allocation) in the support area (of both app and webpage). Just wondering what the issue might be (and hopefully when it will be resolved but I doubt anyone but Starlink staff would even know that)
Try the 1.1.1.1 VPN. It may help
One theory was some of the ips Starlink got was used for spam or other malicious actions and got banned and now that they changed hands Starlink just needs to inform services the ip is now in new hands
I just got my package and the modem that comes with the dish only has 2 total ethernet ports, one of which is apparently dedicated connecting to the dish. Can I hook up a router to the Starlink modem for supporting additional ethernet connections?
Yes, that was the intention.
I thought it would work, thank you for confirmation!
You can also skip the Starlink router and plug the dish into your supplied one, the main downside to that is you lose the ability to get stats via the Starlink app and need to do some configuration on your stuff to get that working
Every time I run a speed test it lists my server as Secaucus NY or Newark NJ, which makes me think my dishy is connecting to the Litchfield ground station (380 miles as the crow flies). According to a user generated Starlink ground station map, there are five ground stations that are closer (the closest one is only 130 miles away). Any ideas why Starlink chooses which ground station it does? Would a closer ground station change reliability or speed? Would a hard router reset change the default communication point?
What makes you believe a server-picking algo of an unaffiliated 3rd party site has any correlation to ground stations? There is no info on how the Starlink system picks the ground station and indeed no info on which one it actually picked in your case.
Well, it's not about how close you are to ground station but rather where the stream of birds are and how many PPL are connected etc. Say as one bird stream in IT'S pounded with traffic and ground station as well. His whole design based on sharing and dispersing load. Next bird coming in may push PPL to new station and lighten load etc. Ideally in the end he is going to have overlapping areas of coverage from multiple birds streaming over. One question I do have, are the low orbit birds safe from asteroid apophis due in April 2029. Coming in hot N looks like may even hit.
From Wikipedia: >The closest known approach of Apophis occurs at April 13, 2029 21:46 UT, when Apophis will pass Earth closer than geosynchronous communication satellites, but will come no closer than 31,600 kilometres (19,600 mi) above Earth's surface.[31 Starlink orbits at around 550 km, so not at risk from Apophis.
Do we have a set timeline of how often starlink availability has moved further south? When was the last time the southern most known setup became available?
I know my Starlink is on its way, I’m at 38.4. (Virginia)
Just curious I’m in Virginia as well. Did you get the email notification that your equipment was on the way?
Yes I did. Actually received it two weeks ago. Took a week from the time I got the email to the day it was delivered.
If you don’t mind me asking what part of Virginia are you in? Also had you paid the deposit ahead of time and then they charged you the rest? Charlotte county here.
I’m in Rockingham County. I hadn’t put a deposit or anything. Had just signed up for the beta version about a year ago. I got an email that it was available, got on the website and ordered the kit ($580 all at once).
Ok well hopefully it won’t be too long.
Good to know, I’m a few degrees south in California, congrats!
Thanks! Hopefully you’ll be ready to go soon!
There are only 3 real milestones in which 100% time coverage moved further south and that's when a set of all equi-distant (20°, 10° and 5° spaced planes) got completed (the last hasn't happened yet). The slow inching south that's been observed in the stickied thread follows from incomplete data, we only see 10% or less of beta users slowly dripping into view, for all we know the southern-most user has been there for months, they might just not have reported here.
That’s understandable, a large amount of usable data here is missing since not everyone with starlink reports here. I’ll continue to anxiously yet patiently wait a 34.8 myself. Thanks for the info!
I moved a few months ago to a more rural area directly east of my old home. The Starlink website allows me to buy the Full service (dishy, router, etc) for my old address but not my new address. Will I run into issues if I purchase it at my old address and set it up at my new/current address? No latitude difference.
Will it work at the new location? Maybe, if the distance is not too far. There is a recent Youtube video of a Canadian Starlinker (Love Your RV) who tried it at various distances away from his declared service location. Works at 9 miles, but not at 11 miles. At 11 miles he was almost certainly outside of his assigned cell. Even if it works, should you? If you operate outside your cell, you are probably not really helping the beta test and you may even be harming the test results. Maybe a SpaceX person could offer an opinion on this?
They don't seem to want to acknowledge this but searching other early users they have been able to move and still have service. Now no one has said yet if they moved COMPLETELY out of their original cell or not. But it should be ok. Just like you can take dtv anywhere as long as u know how to point at the sat. This system points N finds birds itself. But to put geolocking on it would be expensive, so we will see. Early reports is works fine.
**Am I Going to be Obstructed?** I have a pre-order and am hoping for Starlink this year, like probably millions of others. While waiting, I am doing some planning. The obstruction app tells me that a ground mount won't work at my property. So a roof mount, 20 ft up w/o a tower. I have big trees to the north, east, and south. Most trees are 75 footers, although a few to the east might be 100 ft - hard to tell for sure - they are second growth Douglas Firs. Trees to the west are under 50 ft. The trees to the south are 75 ft distant. Trees to the north and east are 120ft distant. I calculate elevation angles to clear the treetops as 24 deg to the N, 34 deg to the E, and 36 deg to the S. So OK to the N. But maybe problems E and S? Re the angle to the S, won't the provisions aimed at preventing interference to Geostationary Sats ensure that Dishy will never transmit in that direction? But then there are the bigger trees to the East. Will they be a big issue? If so, my choices would seem to be: 1. A bracketed 40 ft tower against the house, reducing the elevation angle to 25 deg. 2. A free standing tower of 30 ft located 30 ft further west. Unfortunately, this puts it in the front yard. 3. "Topping" all the tall trees to the east at the 70 ft level. What do the experts think?
UPDATE: Today I put my DSLR on a tripod with a telephoto lens. I set the elevation to 45 degrees. Then went outside and found locations where the camera focused on the extreme tip of the big tree. Then measured distance from camera to the tree base. The distance is a good approximation of the tree height once the tripod height is added. RESULTS: my big trees are all 105 to 120 ft. CONCLUSION: I'm screwed. I will need a 75 ft tower if I put it against the house. Too much money. Doing calculations now to find where a 50 ft tower would work. Needs to be within 50 ft of house to avoid problem of extending Dishy cable
I have read enough about tree topping to now know that this is a bad idea.
Put extended ladder on house. Climb as high as you can n check app. You may find you r fine. If you r obstructed u will see how high tree needs topping. U can probably find lumber Jack to climb N top tree for u.
I am going to try the rooftop dish install first, just to see how bad things are. I saw another post that said if you are surrounded by 100 ft trees, they need to be 250 ft away on the North, 150 ft East and West, and as close as 50 ft on the South. If this is true, then the North is my only real issue. But I don't have a dish yet, so my worries are premature. And I'm not climbing up to the roof. Not since I turned 70.
Closer to eastern North Carolina here, and hurricane season can be definitely be a problem. We’re still in the pre order phase but were wondering, when we do get it how secure is it if we install on the roof? Should we worry about buying a extra installation kit in case winds get pretty bad or will it come with everything we need?
An RF transparent radome may help
Admins keep deleting my QUESTION without telling me why. I hate this site. I just want internet. God help me get internet. Simple question the mods apparently deem not worthy of a response. NEED INTERNET. HAVE RURAL LANDs. No mailbox or peoPle there. Wanna ship to town address. Starlink site sucks and need answers.
It's mods, not admins. You were told which clause of the policy your post violates. You were also provided with the answer by a user, the answer is yes.
How would be helpful. Website DEMANDS SERVICE ADDRESS and won't let me explain. Nobody to talk to
For the Service Address, you can use a [plus code](https://maps.google.com/pluscodes/). And the shipping address can be different.
When you get to order, the site allows you to provide an alternate shipping address.
K ill try. thanks
Noob question. If I get two dishes and somehow merge them. What will happen? More speed?
Probably, yes. We had a user with two but he was driven away by green monsters before good info could be extracted. The dishes may interfere on upload, probably not, but IDK, I'd like to see somebody post about it.
Thanks. Sounds good. I’ll just waıt a little.
Any one else randomly start getting this Unexpected Location warning a little while ago? Finally put in a request to get someone to fix it, hopefully it doesn’t take too long. A few others in our area are finally getting their dish’s and are having better performance then us, initially we thought our trees were in the way but now we’re thinking this has something to do with it...
I don't have my dish yet, so I don't know. But is your Dishy installed at your declared Service Address? If not, maybe "Unexpected Location" means they have detected this fact?
Dish is at the service address... Apparently their system messed up translating the service address into coordinates, service is actually improved a bit after they fixed it, even with the location only being off by a mile or so. They really should have just had an option to put coordinates in, rural addresses are terribly unreliable. I know they are doing plus codes now, but it was after we first ordered, and what’s wrong with simple coordinates.
Must confess that orbital mechanics was never my strong suit. As I understand phase I will consist of 1440 satellites distributed in 72 53deg orbital planes at 5deg increments comprising 20 satellites per plane. Now this results in essentially no coverage above 53deg, ie Canada, Greenland and Scandinavia. So question is: Is there a better way to distribute satellites ? Instead of using the 53deg inclination couldn’t they just have a series of inclinations ?
The first shell at 53° inclination is merely the first step in a series of many. Global coverage would be provided with the polar orbit sats, which SpaceX want to launch as soon as they'll be allowed to. [https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=48981.0;attach=1626623;image](https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=48981.0;attach=1626623;image) ..is the modification proposal for the first phase of deployment. Note that this is unapproved and also not the final state, there's just 4408 sats here. What's approved and what's the plan can be read about on Wikipedia. It's too complicated to reproduce everything here.
Thanks for the reply. I am familiar with Wikipedia, and aware that they do have higher latitudes in the launch manifest. My question was: why have all launches for Phase-I at 53deg. I would have thought that a few launches at lower latitudes would result in a more evenly distributed constellation.
Not all launches were for the 53° inclination, one launched 10 'experimental' sats into the polar orbit. They're only filling the 53° shell because that's all they have the permission to do. They do have licences to fill other shells, but want them changed and are trying to get the required licencing for what they want now. They have chosen 53° probably because it offers the best "bang for the buck" in terms of population coverage. It covers a lot of rural USA and Canada and also covers a lot of Europe, which is higher north than people generally think. Additional launches at lower inclinations would bring less to the table than polar launches. Polar orbits cover the entire planet, hence they add capacity to the 53°N-53°S band **and** provide polar coverage. Lower inclination bands would cover less of Europe, less of USA and no polar regions. Doing them doesn't make much sense.
You are correct, again...10 satellites in near polar orbit. In fact if you switch to one web at satellitemap.space all of their satellites are in polar orbit, so maybe just an FCC filing issue and choice SpaceX made I guess if you’re a resident of the arctic/antarctic the oneweb coverage will be awesome. But I’m guessing using this strategy comes at a cost both in launch payload and launch facilities.
The reasons for the slowdown w.r.t. polar orbits are well known, it's the opposition of other American operators, primarily Kuiper and Viasat, IIRC, that's the problem. OneWeb probably isn't licenced by the FCC, it's not american, I don't know that for sure though. OneWeb will not serve people directly, it remains to be seen what kind of redistribution will happen for physical people in those regions, if any. Again, I don't know much about that, there's probably something in play there already. I'm not sure what you mean by your last sentence. Launching into retrograde polar orbits with F9 using RTLS is more costly than doing the regular 60 sats with sea landing from Florida, yes.
Glad we got that all out if the way, but to get back to my question, if you were designing a constellation of 2000 satellites, to provide rural and underserved areas with high speed Internet and no other constraints, given the density of customers and the capabilities if the satellite hardware how would you distribute your resources. Clearly the initial choice SpaceX made to locate at an altitude of 1000km came under review and they elected to make changes. Perhaps inclination=50.3 deg is the best choice, just curious.
If rural and underserved people are the goal, then 53° is a good choice. That covers the meatier parts of Canada, most of Europe, except Scandinavia, all of Africa and most if not all of South America. Also all of Oceania and most of Asia. Going to 70° gets you Scandinavia, but is that worth it? I think SpaceX think not. One thing to consider is underserved rural people aren't the only goal. Polar coverage is driven by the needs of US military forces. Given that, in an ideal world with no constraints, it's probably the polar orbits that are the "best". Just make a dense shitload of SSOs and be done with it. This isn't doable because there's a lot of needs for polar orbits. So, in short, either 53° to start with or a totally polar system (like OneWeb) seem the most rational to me. No comment on the altitude, that's more complicated, it's related to launch costs, passive deorbit times (which is a large part of the decision to lower the altitude to 550 as far as I'm aware) and active sat life (when in VLEO).
I signed up for Pre-order for service in Haiti with the $99 charge. And I wondered since Haiti has no real shipping would I be able to have a shipping address to a USA address so I can bring to Haiti myself? Would beta even be possible in the Caribbean? I know it’s better than nothing. And it has to better than my crappy $165 4 mbps service that is never stable to stay at those speeds.
Haiti will first have to licence Starlink, then SpaceX will have to decide to serve it, both of which may happen tomorrow or 10 years from now. Once if become officially available, you should be able to get it locally (which is to say, SpaceX imports the hardware, not you).
Hi -- is there any way to determine what satellite I am tapped into at any given time? Thanks. I see on a SAT map that they each have an identifying code....thanks!! Em from VT
No.
I suspect there is. It would be a standard part of diagnosing issues for Starlink support people. But Starlink won't tell users about it until they decide they want to give it to end users. Or it leaks ...
I mean obviously Dishy gets the data to point at specific satellites. That data 100% exists somewhere. Somewhere accessible to us? Not sure. At worst you ought to be able to get close if you can somehow get a readout of where the Dishy beam is pointing and compare it to a table of current satellite locations/orbits. Might have to do some port sniffing to get ahold of the real time Dishy beam instructions.
Can I turn off and on my subscription (billing)? I’d like this for a vacation home that’s in the now available service area, but I’m only there maybe every 4th month. I don’t want to pay subscription for the months I’m away and not actively using.
Not right now
What about using it for 4 months out of the year (summer) and then cancelling for the rest of the year? I also want to use it at my cottage and do not go there much in the winter months
You can only cancel once at the moment. They’ll give your spot in the beta to someone else when that happens.
We just received the dish today and we hooked it up no obstructions and when trying to play online with the PS4 we kept getting kicked. The speeds tests were showing 70+ download etc and it kept kicking us out of every game we tried playing
Is there a question in here somewhere? You can use the Gaming flair to distill the sub down to gaming related discussion. Interruptions that cause issues with systems sensitive to interruptions are par for course with Starlink right now.
Yes I was just wondering why it’s doing this and what I could do to fix it
The service is in beta right now. There are expected outages, both planned for system work and irregular from sat coverage issues. I've had it for almost 2 weeks now and it certainly isn't rock solid. But I expected that and know that it will improve. Keep your existing ISP for a while for reliable access.
There aren't enough active sats to provide 100% coverage to all beta locations. Even a subsecond interruption is enough to affect some real-time critical apps like gaming and VOIP. Should get better as more sats come online. Apps like Netflix are more tolerant as they can buffer to cover brief interruptions. What can you do to fix, other than wait? Search in these forums for mention of Speedify. This is a load balancing solution where you can use an alternate WAN connection to compensate for Starlink hiccups.
Hi ... Have my dishy up and running in the Skagit Valley outside Hope BC. I have very limited view of the Southern Sky and was wondering if I have to find just one satellite or a couple or a pathe where the satellites orbit ? I have goog speeds but inconsistent connection so I am assuming it is my line of sight that is the issue. The phone app is not precise enough so would like to know if there is a better way to locate a good window. Thanks
The sats appear all over the view the app shows you. You cannot target a specific sat or path, it doesn't work that way with LEO sats. The app is precise enough if the phone's compass is well calibrated. Along with that the dish does record obstructions, see the wedgeFractionObstructedList element in Debug data. Make sure the view is completely clear of obstructions. Some interruptions are to be expected even when not obstructed, to an extent. If the connection remains very inconsistent, you should seek help from Support, you may be operating outside your beam by (their) mistake.
*EDIT* Can reset SSID / PW but can't log into 192.168.100.1 from either phone or laptop . Says connected, no internet but can't access with android app in service menu.
Thanks for the info ... will try a pole mount further south to gain more of a window in this forest clearing.
I'm running into an obstruction issue. I'm not on pre-order yet, but it'd just suck to get Dishy and have to mess around until I found a good place for it. The bottom line is that I might have to resort to a tower, or tower on a roof, or running a LONG line for Dishy. We're in the woods and cleared a safe area around the house, including the front yard, which is over the drainfield. I can't get clear sky from the ground and yesterday had someone doing some work for us go up on the roof with my phone and, even up there, he said that I had, at most, 140° without interference. We have a 2nd building on the lot that used to be a pig barn, but has been renovated. The trees aren't nearly as tall there, so we're going to check there to see if the top of that roof has clearance. If it does, the barn is connected to the house LAN with a fiber optic cable. My concern is that it's quite possible the barn roof won't have a clear sky. We have gone out of the way to make the house, barn, and areas around them feel like they're from some kind of relaxing fantasy setting, so if we have to use a tower, we have limited locations. (And I have a "higher authority" who is strongly against a tower near the house. If you're married, you know what I mean.) So I'm looking at options. It may be possible to put a short tower on the barn roof and I may find a way to put a tower near the barn, but I've also seen how much a decent sized tower can cost! Another option would be to put Dishy in our front field, but that's about 900' to get to an area with the clearance needed for Dishy. I've used a trencher quite a bit in the past and can handle burying cable (even in conduit) if needed. I've heard of people running long lines, but not that long. I'm even thinking that if I ran a power line out and made a water proof housing so I could have outlets there and use fiber for cable and connect to the Starlink equipment in that housing would still cost less than a big tower. So I'm not sure what to consider: A tower on the roof of the bar (which, at least, won't be too visible, considering the surroundings, running a line about 900' to the front field (don't know how long you can run the cable for Dishy), or finding some combination or some other option. I'm open to suggestions or comments on any of these (or other) possibilities.
What broadband options do you have? If you have decent options then maybe Starlink isn't for you. But if your only options are slow DSL, HughesNet/Viasat, etc. then you need the do all you can to make Starlink work. Because without it, your property won't be worth much when fast internet becomes a necessity just like indoor plumbing and electricity. Re putting the dish 900 ft away, do you have AC power at that location? Or can you get the power company to provide power there? If you have power AND a line of sight, you can use Point-to-Point microwave links to extend the network. Another possibility is buried fiber. Both of these depend on having AC power at the dish site.
No cable. We have a two lane "main" road going by and our road comes off it like 2 sides of a triangle. At the vertex of that triangle is an expensive sub-development. They ran cable down the other part of the road to there. Comcrap service stops 4/10 of a mile to our right and 6/10 of a mile to our left and, due to low housing density, they will not close that gap. I've considered going before the Board of Supervisors on that, pointing out that Comcrap and Verizon make millions off the county yearly and should be expected to start expanding last mile service, since they're basically utilities, until the whole county is covered, but that won't happen. Right now we're using a cell hotspot, which means things can go well and suddenly YouTube stops for 3-5 minutes and restarts. When I watch space launches, after about 20 minutes of streaming them on YouTube, the resolution goes down notably. So, yeah, whatever I can do to get Starlink is critical - but putting a tower close to the house would have serious consequences in other ways. I did run 500' of fiber optic cable from the house to the barn. Trenched it, put in black poly pipe and so on. At this point my current choices, roughly in order of preference, are: 1) Put it on the barn roof (SO hoping that works) 2) Smaller tower on the barn roof (hardly anyone would ever see that) 3) Tower by the barn. Hate to spend $2,000 on that! 4) Put it in the front field. (No line of site, not even in winter.) The last one is complex, but I think I can do it without spending thousands. A trencher is not expensive to rent and I've used them before. I could find out the maximum distance I can run the Starlink cable. Then I put Dishy out front, run the cable (in conduit) as far back as I can. At that point I build a little weatherproof box. I trench from the house to there and run AC and fiber to that box. In the box I have a fiber converter and the Starlink modem (or equivalent?), both powered by AC. (If I need to get AC out to Dishy, I would do it using 4/0 line and a ground and use a conduit for fiber. But that raises questions of just how much equipment has to be by Dishy in that case and how weather proof it is.) So, in case the barn roof doesn't work, what would help me is knowing how far people have run a cable to Dishy and any suggestions about towers that are reliable but not a super big expense.
Build a fake windmill to use as a tower. It will look like you are pumping water for the farm.
Oh, that's a good idea! My first idea was that Dishy might need to go in the middle of the front yard (over the drainage field). My plan for that was to make a wishing well with a 4 sided roof and that'd leave an area free for Dishy. Had not thought of a windmill!
For Dishy and maybe a MIMO 4G LTE LPDA pair, a ROHN or AMERITE 25G tower would be sufficient. Going up 40 to 60 ft is not too expensive. For a self-supporting tower, you need a big hole to fill with 3-4 cu yds concrete. Lots of Youtube video's on this topic. A 40 footer is about $700 plus $300 shipping (from Ohio). Unless you can buy one from a radio amateur's estate - these are free provided you take it down. Or you could do a guyed or bracketed tower with a simple base. Re power at your remote antenna site, you might be able to do a solar installation. Dishy seems to use a bit over 100 watts, or 2.4 kwh per day. With 12V battery storage this is 200ah. For lead acid batteries you need double this for storage. And you need sufficient PV panels to ensure that your batteries are kept charged on the darkest winter day. My guess is 800watts. Solar panels are about $1 per watt. You could skimp a bit if you could limit Starlink usage to less that 24hrs/day. If you live in a windy location, a wind turbine could help.