[Starlink] Re: Starlink D2D observation - fwiw

[Ulrich Speidel <u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz>]

On 27/02/2026 12:07 pm, Michael Richardson wrote:
> Ulrich Speidel via Starlink<starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>      > As expected, coverage was much better outdoors, although it seemed to
>      > occasionally manage to pick up the network through a window as well. Sending
>      > text from indoors didn't work for me at all. But having that option was nice.
>
> In the 2G days, there were actually useful passive reflectors/antenna that
> one could put in a window to "boost" the signal.  (It always seemed like total
> black magic to me)
> I had one, it improved things for reception in my basement office, then 3G
> was no problem for awhile, and then it became a problem again.
> (My did-not-answer call forward goes to a voip service that relays to my
> * and Cisco desktop phone via IP...)
>
> I wonder if such a thing could exist for the satellite link.  If so, such
> remote cabins could just have some.
> As you said, it took some minutes to work, and I wonder how much of that is
> waiting for the right coverage window with the overhead things.
All good questions. With 4G and 5G, there's a lot more to a signal than 
in 2G, and anything that meddles with phase and direction is potentially 
problematic.
> Glad you found the tap on the water tanks.
It wasn't actually on any of the tanks - just below the top of one in 
terms of level, and the pump it was connected through must have stopped 
in a state in which it permitted flow of a couple of litres a minute.
> After August 2003 blackout, multiple buildings in Ottawa discovered that
> one needed electricity in order to pump the diesel to the backup generator's
> tanks, which were often located on the roof.  Nobody had considered that
> power might be out longer than the tanks had fuel for.
Secondary issues like these are common unfortunately.
>      > One road opened again the next morning, and the power came back on later that
>      > day, along with the 4G coverage.
>
> In the interlude between the storm and the roads opening, was it sunny?
It became sunny, yes, but in terms of using something solar PV that day 
you would have had a hard time on the first day after the storm. I run 
my house (including a granny flat) on grid-connected PV with battery 
backup, and this is what the weather system looked like on our PV system 
monitor two days earlier when it passed over Auckland:

Basically it spent a lot of time re-charging the battery (green solid 
area). That was before the weather system went out into the Pacific 
southeast of NZ and "refueled". So what you see above is an optimistic view.

In comparison, this is what this Tuesday looked like, when it was mostly 
nice and sunny here (note the different kW scale on the left):

It's still summer here, and only a small part of the yield went into 
battery re-charge - the rest mostly powered our neighbours. Note the 
steep drop after the battery reaches maximum SOC isn't weather related, 
it's regulatory: We're only allowed 5 kW of AC generation per phase. 
That's meant to change but our local lines company is not quite there yet.

> Was the hiking good?

-- 
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)

The University of Auckland
u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz 
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
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