And he also mentions that if this were his only Internet, he would trim the tree branches to get a better view of the sky. That's not what I'd do though; I'd put the satellite dish on a radio mast. Anyone who's ever done any kind of radio work knows that antenna height is everything, and in his specific case it's important for a different reason: avoiding line-of-sight obstructions.
Maybe mounting the dish to tree would save your
trees?
https://asadotzler.com/2021/03/11/starlinks-view-of-the-sky/
I mounted a point-to-point link in a tree at either end.
1. Trees sway. It did matter for the PtP link in my case.
2. Installation and maintenance took time and it was dangerous.
3. Leaves and branches grow. Obstruction and misalignment over time were problems.
Advantages: it did work, and it was cheap and fun to do. I probably could not have installed a tall enough mast (too ugly to be accepted).
Re:Starlink review, four months in
by ClumsyPilot on Thursday July 22, 2021 @11:31AM
(#27920053)
Repending on height of the mast, it could be more expensive than the rest of your setup combined
trimming trees is a recurring activity, it might be expensive over time depending on type of trees and access etc
Yeah holy shit. The dude has obstructions and then writes a review about it? It's like putting bad gas in your car, then writing a review about how bad it was... Admittedly getting rid of the obstructions was a TON of work. It took me a few weeks of moving my dish around, and fiddling around with different mounts and options. I even topped a tree. But once I got rid of the obstructions, the service improved dramatically. Now with the launches that we have had of new satellites and other updates, I don't see hardly any drops at all. The most common annoyance with mine right now is the router/dish crashing. This happens maybe once every two weeks. Not much worse than the shitty Comcast-supplied modem. My next step is to use my own router and I think that'll take care of a lot of it.
Partial obstructions are not going to be rare for customers. While not a best-case review, this is arguably a more authentic review.
Re:Starlink review, four months in
by freedomben on Thursday July 22, 2021 @01:46PM
(#27921993)
I get the crashes every week or so too and I use my own router. I think it's the firmware in the dish.
He mentions that this is due to the Starlink dish's view of the sky being partially obscured by trees.
This will presumably improve as the number of Starlink satellites grows, as it will be more likely that there will be an unobstructed satellite in view at any moment, and less frequent switching between satellites.