I’ve been waiting for a nice day to test my new Starlink Mini. After two days of storms, today turned out to be a sunny day. McKinney North / Celina KOA Holiday offered me a good deal on a 70 foot long drive through spot. It is in the middle of the property with an unobstructed view of the sky. Being a retired veteran has its benefits. 🙂
Getting there was a challenge. I decided to let Apple Maps get me there. I wanted to avoid the highway, so I took side roads. I downloaded the area map, and I made sure my Bad Elf GPS was fired up. This combination eliminates delays caused by map data downloading as you drive, and provides true GPS functionality.
iPhones offer Assisted GPS (also known as A-GPS or AGPS). Unlike true GPS, Assisted GPS relies on satellites and cell towers. Ever wonder why Apple only offers GPS on devices that have cell functionality? Now you know. For off grid travel Assisted GPS is pretty crappy – GPS rules.
A good article on Assisted GPS.
Well, as luck would have it, there were several road closures along the way. I trusted Apple Maps to warn me…but it let me down. One road closure had a four foot pile of rocks. I normally would climb over if I wasn’t pulling a trailer. The road was narrow, with no shoulders, and a foot or so drop on each edge. I had to do my Austin Powers imitation to turn around.
After going a dozen or so miles out of the way, I finally got to the KOA. I found my spot and started to set up the camper. I leveled the trailer, chocked the wheels, connected to the 30A power feed. I then connected the fresh water line, then connected the sewage line. I purged the gray and black tanks. Then I topped off the fresh water tank, so I have it for the next time.
I love this four season camping trailer. The thermostat is easy to set, so I can keep the trailer temperature at 68 degrees. I’m pretty sure I’ll be picking up a generator. I need it for those times when I need to run the AC and microwave. Neither work with DC power. I know traditional boondockers don’t like it when someone brings a generator to a distributed camp site. Oh well.
Now that the trailer is set up, I started to work on getting the Starlink Mini set up. For this trip, I set it up on the Jeep’s hard top. I used a couple of bungee cords to keep it from moving around. This prevented it from falling off. I used my iPhone’s compass app to orient the Starlink Mini to true north. I don’t have a proper mount yet. I had to move the Jeep a few times. This helped to get it pointing in the right direction.
After waiting a half hour or so, I launched the Starlink app, to fine tune the alignment. I was so close it didn’t take much to get it perfectly aligned.
The obstructions view shows blue where it has good reception, and red where satellite reception isn’t great. The obstruction map takes time to refine itself, so I expect to see more blue and less red by morning.
Performance was pretty good for camping, nowhere near as good as being at home on fiber though. 🙂
Will run more tests in the morning, and will update this blog if I get better results.
I hope mounting the Starlink Mimi on top of the camper will help with performance too.
Performance was good enough to watch Tulsa King and Yellowstone. Heading out tomorrow for a boondocking test.
EDIT 2024115
I reported an issue where the Starlink app was reporting obstructions beyond the Starlink Mini’s 110 degree angle of view. Today an update was pushed out to us. Now there are no longer reports obstructions (red) beyond the 110 degrees.