Taking Starlink on a vacation sailing trip
A Starlink subscriber to the company’s RV option decided to try it on his sailing boat during a weeklong trip among the Greek islands, and found it worked surprisingly well.
They combined Starlink’s service with cellular connectivity and compared the two while using social media, Google maps, and video streaming. The outcome? Starlink and cellular complimented each other, according to Topolev.
Starlink suffered outages when it was surrounded by other boats’ masts or when the yacht made sharp turns, but worked well at sea, whereas cellular connectivity dropped out when the boat was far from the shore, Topolev said. “It was surprisingly good,” he said. “There were some outages and sometimes we had to manually reboot it … but basically it worked … almost all the time.”
The RV option is specifically for use in moving vehicles, though its use on a boat was not expected to be its prime target customers. Nonetheless, the test suggests strongly that Starlink will work quite well on the big cruise ships, one liner of which, Royal Caribbean, has already signed a deal to make Starlink operational by next year.
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A Starlink subscriber to the company’s RV option decided to try it on his sailing boat during a weeklong trip among the Greek islands, and found it worked surprisingly well.
They combined Starlink’s service with cellular connectivity and compared the two while using social media, Google maps, and video streaming. The outcome? Starlink and cellular complimented each other, according to Topolev.
Starlink suffered outages when it was surrounded by other boats’ masts or when the yacht made sharp turns, but worked well at sea, whereas cellular connectivity dropped out when the boat was far from the shore, Topolev said. “It was surprisingly good,” he said. “There were some outages and sometimes we had to manually reboot it … but basically it worked … almost all the time.”
The RV option is specifically for use in moving vehicles, though its use on a boat was not expected to be its prime target customers. Nonetheless, the test suggests strongly that Starlink will work quite well on the big cruise ships, one liner of which, Royal Caribbean, has already signed a deal to make Starlink operational by next year.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
We still should have kept LORAN just in case.
Starlink RV is not intended for moving vehicles. Rather, it’s for portable use. You transport the turned-off dish from place to place, but while operating, your location is fixed.
Various folks have experimented using Starlink while in motion (cars, boats) and yes it mostly works, but this is not licensed nor approved behavior. Interesting mix of legal and technical reasons why this is so.
The recently announced Starlink Maritime is designed for use while in motion, as is the soon-to-be-real Starlink for aircraft.
Steve Golson: Thank you for the clarification.
Star link’s software programmers are finally catching up to the needs of their remote subscribers.
If you dangle a carrot, there better be a ‘GD’ carrot in evidence for the $.
Or else.
.
My guess is that the Starlink systems used on the cruse ships is the same as used on land. They more than likely have two or three active at one time and the ships is not moving around like a small sail boat could.
They also said that a few times it was because of being inside a large amount of masts that helped to block the signal. Not something you would find on the roof of a cruse ship
I bet if you had two systems on top of a moving vehicle linked together and programed to have one track will the other searches for the next link it would work better.