Hey everyone, it’s not the usual sailing stuff (back to that next Saturday!) but I just wanted to make a quick video specifically about Starlink and how it also has its downsides. There’s just so much content around where this system gets praised and a lot of sailors and other remote users are very excited about it, but it definitely has its problems and I felt like there’s just so much of the “fanboy” content around and not that much critique. Anyway, I put this together in a relatively short time and without much of a preparation but I hope it still might be useful. By the way, if you’re a Patron, I want to let you know that this was NOT a patron-sponsored video! (your pledge won’t get charged for this video)

In the video I reference to a website/video that had instructions on how to drill out and replace the connector of the dish. Unfortunately I COULD NOT find it anymore, if you know a good set of instructions please leave a comment below. But essentially you have to break the plastic bottom piece of the pole (use a flathead screwdriver) so that you can slide the plastic piece off and free the connector. After that you CAREFULLY drill a hole in to the pole (like I’ve done in this video), then you cut the connector off so that you can fish out the cable from the hole. Now you’re in the same situation as my dish is in this video, and you’re free to crimp a RJ45 connector onto the cable. This will make it easier for you to use your own PoE injector and router etc.

Starlink customer service did eventually get back to us and a new cable arrived after a bit more than 3 weeks after I sent the support ticket. Of course I can not use the cable anymore as I’ve essentially butchered the dish, but it’s good to have spare anyway. They did also issue a 2 week service refund, which is nice, but I’d rather just have a working system!

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00:00 Broken Starlink
00:41 Questionable customer service…
01:49 No spare parts
02:57 How the problems start & the design flaw
04:25 The sketchy “fix”
06:10 How to avoid the problems
07:03 Critique
08:18 Using Starlink on a boat
09:17 Testing the fix
10:19 Why Starlink might not be so great…