[Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Mike Puchol]

Placing a gateway at the Fiji teleport results in satellites that cover Tonga being serviced. However, satellite density, but most importantly, GSO protection, take out a significant portion of the coverage from the satellites.

They would need to lower minimum elevation (now 25° everywhere) to improve the situation. With things as-is, Tonga would be covered by 1-2 satellites which should be enough for emergency service restoration.

You can play around with this on my tracker at https://starink.sx, I will be adding the temporary gateway in a few minutes.

Please not that the date line causes some weird issues with the map and the algorithms, which I’m still trying to fix. You can thank whoever thought moving from -180° to +180° across a line was a good idea.

Best,

Mike
On Feb 7, 2022, 22:24 +0100, David Lang <david at lang.hm>, wrote:
> the dish aimes at where it sees the most satellites, not necessarily 53. I took
> my dish to a campground where there were trees to the north and it ended up
> pointing straight up (Los Angeles area) performance was fine.
>
> when you power it on, the dish tilts and swivels to point straight up (no idea
> what the angle logic is), and after a few min of watching the sky will re-aim
> itself if/as needed.
>
> David Lang
>
> On Mon, 7 Feb 2022, Ben Greear wrote:
>
> > Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2022 13:18:49 -0800
> > From: Ben Greear <greearb at candelatech.com>
> > To: starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net
> > Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?
> >
> > 90 or even much smaller percentage is a lot better than zero.
> >
> > I wonder if they can point the dish towards the horizon to pick up the sat
> > where
> > it can best see the functional downlink. I realize the dish auto-points
> > itself
> > now, but surely engineers that can design that can also design an 'off'
> > switch
> > for that and let their on-the-ground folks do some hacking....
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Ben
> >
> > On 2/7/22 11:05 AM, Christian von der Ropp wrote:
> > > But in practice the satellites won't be sitting and waiting at the edge of
> > this 940km radius. They are moving in and out the radius and the question is
> > if
> > > satellite density is high enough so that once the serving satellite loses
> > its gateway link there's another satellite in the 940km radius which also
> > covers
> > > Tonga. And then this new satellite cannot be within certain elevation
> > angles (~60-80° at 0° azimuth) where the geostationary arc crosses Fijian
> > skies and the
> > > gateway antennas have to seize emission. My gut feeling is that
> > availability in Tonga would be <90% simply because it's too far out at the
> > edge of a Fijian
> > > gateway's range where there will be frequent service interruptions.
> > >
> > >
> > > Am 07.02.2022 um 19:51 schrieb Nathan Owens:
> > > > The current coverage radius of a gateway/ground station with a 25 degree
> > minimum elevation is ~940km, so nothing in theory.
> > > >
> > > > On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 10:50 AM Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel at sokolov.eu.org>
> > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Hello,
> > > >
> > > > I hope this is not offtopic: Starlink wants to build a ground station
> > on
> > > > Fiji to supply Tonga with internet.
> > > >
> > > > The distance between Tonga and Fiji is about 750 km minimum. That's
> > > > quite the distance.
> > > >
> > > > What does Starlink have to do to make this work?
> > > >
> > > > Cheers
> > > > Daniel
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Starlink mailing list
> > > > Starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net
> > > > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Starlink mailing list
> > > > Starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net
> > > > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Starlink mailing list
> > > Starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net
> > > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/starlink/attachments/20220207/b095317e/attachment.html>