Starlink and who has it.

[gogetter20]

Now that Starlink is available for RV’s I have seen three with it and only able to talk to one person who has had it for a few days.

My questions are the following.

1. How is it when under trees. Is it like when using tv satellite and little to know reception?
2. How is it when taking down and storing while moving?
3. Any latency or throttling like a hotspot? Decent amount of data to use or unlimited till you reach a certain amount of data used threshold?

I am sure more questions could come up but, those are my three main concerns right now.

[docj]

Originally Posted by gogetter20

Now that Starlink is available for RV’s I have seen three with it and only able to talk to one person who has had it for a few days.

My questions are the following.

1. How is it when under trees. Is it like when using tv satellite and little to know reception?
2. How is it when taking down and storing while moving?
3. Any latency or throttling like a hotspot? Decent amount of data to use or unlimited till you reach a certain amount of data used threshold?

I am sure more questions could come up but, those are my three main concerns right now.

1. Pointing Starllnk is ENTIRELY different from pointing a "regular" satellite dish. It needs roughly 100 degrees of clear sky aperture. That's not at all like pointing a dish through the trees at a single spot in the sky.

2. Taking it down from a pole should be no worse than any other relatively heavy item you have up on a pole

3. There is no throttling due to usage. But RV use is lower priority than residential use but no one really knows what that means at the moment

[AZRVR17]

Mine arrives Friday, will be setting up over the weekend

[Nwcid]

Originally Posted by gogetter20

Now that Starlink is available for RV’s I have seen three with it and only able to talk to one person who has had it for a few days.

My questions are the following.

1. How is it when under trees. Is it like when using tv satellite and little to know reception?
2. How is it when taking down and storing while moving?
3. Any latency or throttling like a hotspot? Decent amount of data to use or unlimited till you reach a certain amount of data used threshold?

I am sure more questions could come up but, those are my three main concerns right now.

DocJ hit it. I am going to add some depth.

1. As stated it needs a wide open space to work. I am using it at my home with ~2% obstruction. I get a 2-3 second drop ever 3-5 minutes due to the obstruction. This works find surfing the web and watching TV, but I would be unable to do my job with it that involves lots of video conferencing.

2. That really depends on how you are going to set yours up. From box to set up took me less than 5 minutes. The dish comes with a basic stand. How you choose to use it with your RV will depend on how long it takes to set up. I have a mast that is 4 sections of 5' pipe to use with the RV. It will take me around 20 minutes to set up or take this system down.

3. It is unlimited, this can be found on their website. They do have priority levels though: Residential, Portable then RV. Latency is similar to cell phone depending on your connection.

[Mighty_J]

We’ve had ours for about a month and a half…

1) not like a TV satellite. It needs a 100 degree conical view once it locks on, so any obstructions in that cone will affect reception, up time and speeds.

2) we’ve used it in the ground and in the “short wall” mount that I installed on my roof awning facade bracket (photo attached). Easy to stow and easy to take in an out. I’m still at a level of fitness/age where climbing the ladder works. I don’t have a pole for it.

3) there is no limit or throttling based on usage. I’ve used it in both over serviced areas and under capacity areas. I average about 125 mbps overall in the month - in under capacity areas I get about 200. I’ve experienced zero problems streaming from multiple devices at once - wife, daughter, grand daughter, me.

However, an activity like a Zoom or Teams call (or FaceTime) is more sensitive to latency. That’s where I experience the challenge. My latency fluctuates between about 25 milliseconds and 100 milliseconds, but usually comes in around 40 to 50. Not great for the near real time needs of that kind of collaboration software. If you’re closer to a ground station than I am, your latency will be better. You can use Starlink.xs on a computer to check the satellite you’re connected to, the positions of other satellites and the locations of the ground stations. If you see one closer, you can email Starlink support and they will move you to the closer station - which impacts your latency. For me, there’s no ground stations in Canada (9 in the US), so it is what it is for now.

I think that about covers my experiences.

[jondrew55]

Here are two down to earth videos on YouTube that I think give a realistic view of the Starlink for RV experience . I’ve only had mine a week and have not had a chance to take it on the road yet. I have it set up at home, which is a waitlisted city (Orlando). The service is ok speed wise. I’m lucky that my dishy can be set up in an “ideal” spot as far as obstructions go. Keep in mind you’re on your own here. Starlink’s tech support and customer service is virtually non existent. I knew all this up front but decided to see for myself. If you have realistic expectations and are willing to suffer Starlink’s growing pains you may be ok. If you typically camp in wooded areas without at least a clear view of the north and east skies, you’ll be frustrated.

https://youtu.be/M7UE6zyacuc

https://youtu.be/NDlskariZL8

[amosnandy]

I just paid for my 4th month of service. Starlink is my ONLY option for service where I have my summer site. Well, I shouldn't say that. We are 3 miles north of town, and the campground owner's house, which is on the highway can get a line of site internet beamed from the top of the water tower to the roof of his garage. I work from home, which is now my motor hoime, so if Starlink did not work, I would be moving to the closest site to the road, or building a tower up the hill about 100 yards and running fiber cable down to my site. In other words, it was my only choice.

Enough BS. I spent most of the winter searching between my house (Which I sold) in town and my seasonal site to find when Starlink would ship. I finally hit a time when it would ship to the house, which is 40 miles to the north, and got it in about a week. Hooked it up in my front yard and it seemed pretty fast. Brought it down to the campground, changed my service location, set it up and it connected in less than a minute.

I hear claims of 100-200 MBPS. I just ran a speed test and got 38 down and 8 up. BUT I think during the day it is a lot less than that. I did a software update and ran a speed test for the tech doing it and was at 15. That was 10:00 am It took 3 hours to reload a program that I last did on cable in 35 minutes.

So to answer your question. Yes, you must have a completely clear view of the northern sky. I have trees behind (south) of my site and have probably a 150-degree clear view and I still get obstruction warnings.

I'm hauling it to Mexico with me but my guess is I'll be using the 10MBPS cable the park there supplies. But we will see if I can even get a signal

First choice? No. Only choice, Yes. If I were parked all winter iin Bowie AZ, which looses WIFI if a breeze even blows it would work great. I wouild not even bother to get it out of the box in 90% of the campgrounds I go to.

[mike625]

Originally Posted by gogetter20

2. How is it when taking down and storing while moving?

5 mins - Have been a using this tripod over 9 mts now. It folds up to easily fit for storage and easy to move around to get the best view of the sky.

Have been able to use it at 12 of 13 campground "no state parks" we have stayed at over the last 6 mts.

[jondrew55]

I bought the Starlink pole adapter, put the dishy on 12’ of PVC pipe zip tied to my rain gutter and have a clear, unobstructed view of the important part of the sky. There are trees directly behind the dish to the south that have no impact on performance. I’ve gotten speeds as high as 160 Mbps down and as low as 1 or 2 Mbps depending on network congestion. I’ve been using it to watch videos and movies as well as for work. I do some Skype meetings and regular phone calls, but mostly emails and moving large files back and forth. It’s worked fine for me. My wife said some of her zoom calls were a bit choppy, but not bad.

[kershman68]

I think the bottom line is each situation is going to vary. Here is another use case. We live in the Blueridge Mountains in VA just below Skyline Drive/Shenandoah National Park. Well, 8 miles below Skyline Drive on a ridge that slopes into a hollow or small valley. Our house is on top of the hill and ringed in tall trees.

We put our dish on the Starlink pole in the front yard and each 12 hour block it keeps statistics our average out outage is every 4-5 minutes for a few seconds.

We are in a waitlisted area and using RV, so deprioritized. Our ground station connection is in Georgia vs Ashburn, VA so our latency is higher.

I have seen peak speeds of 242 Mbps and latency in the mid-20 ms. I have seen low end speeds of 3 Mbps and latency of 6870 ms (no satellite so very long latency).

For me, it works and works better than my Verizon and AT&T hotspots. We have no other internet options besides Hughes/ViaSat, Cell, and now Starlink. I have worked remotely here for 27+ months.

I have taken Teams calls with Starlink and had some mild drop outs, but they aren’t bad and honestly better than when my hotspot runs low on bandwidth and everything slows down, the screen gets stuck, maybe I have to switch between hotspots, or hang up and dial back in.

Now, my use on Starlink for Teams has been limited because my work laptop is the only think on my hotspot now, so it is performing better, but I do Teams meetings on my iPad that is on the Starlink network and the few drop outs are very tolerable. I haven’t had to switch networks or hang up and dial back in yet.

Again, your situation will vary, but for me and my wife it works well and I dumped my Verizon hotspot since I wasn’t using it anymore. AT&T for work, Starlink for everything else.

Attached are two pictures, the dish on the Starlink pole in the front yard, and then a picture from the yard so you can see the trees we have to deal with.

[lemodrop9344]

Originally Posted by mike625

5 mins - Have been a using this tripod over 9 mts now. It folds up to easily fit for storage and easy to move around to get the best view of the sky.

Have been able to use it at 12 of 13 campground "no state parks" we have stayed at over the last 6 mts.

This is the set up my son & I went with. I was reluctant to mount anything on the RV as I would end up being site dependent when it came to obstructions. Dishy does not play well with obstructions.

[Isaac-1]

It should be noted that the smartphone app has a feature that uses the phones camera and position sensor to scan the sky and estimate the amount of obstructions, which should give you a rough idea if a given location is halfway suitable.


We have been using Starlink on the family cattle ranch since February, overall it works well though typical download speeds are in the 45mbps down and 15 up, and ping times around 35 ms average. Outages lately (the last month or so) are typically less than 1 minute per day, often less than 20 seconds per day, but 3-4 months ago these were typically 2-3 minutes per day, though we do get signal dropout during heavy rain, typically for not more than a few seconds at a time though.

[Jobert]

We have been using our Starlink for about a month. It works great, considering we have no other options. No Verizon and very poor ATT, but enough to get by a little. Like the Starlink. For those of you that have moved around, taking it down is not a problem, neither is the re-setting up. At that point do you just put it up and plug it in and let it find itself, or do you need to type in an address in the app? I am planning to use a small tripod that will put it about 3 1/2' off the ground and plan to purchase a ladder mount later on if needed. Thanks in advance for the help. Happy Trails, Bert

[Camper25]

I just use the factory mount that came with mine, either on top of the RV or sitting on the ground if I wish. It works well for me.