Below the Tearline: Integrating Starlink

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground now that the starlink mini has been out and about for some period of time and uh the starlink system has been used in a few different disasters around the country I thought I would take some time today to kind of talk about the system talk about some of the ways that you can integrate a little bit more easily if if you need it during a disaster situation and perhaps most importantly how you can leverage this as a tool alongside some of your other radio tools during a disaster situation or even just more for everyday use uh one of the common questions that's come out since the starlink mini in particular has has been out on the market is does this replace HF radio does this replace any kind of radio communications tools and the short answer right up front is yes and no in some ways it does replace some of the tools that we have uh grown used to over the over the years but in other ways it can't really uh replace some of the things that we rely on the most during disasters so now that starlink has been out on the market for a long long time and has been used in Disaster Response uh for Hurricane Helen most notably again also in Los Angeles now uh in a few other localized disasters uh between these two incidents one of the grand questions is how does this affect radio such as this one this is a zigu g90 pretty standard uh man pack Arrangement most popularized by uh the tech prepper so this is a fairly St industry standard now for using HF radio uh out in the field is to kind of put it in this sort of of pack like this and and kind of go from there as one might imagine it's fairly challenging to compare a 1930s radio technology with the internet uh so they're they're just apples and arous I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about that but we do need to address this right up front because I think a lot of people are probably going down the wrong path with regards to their their choices during an emergency response situation but just to get the ball rolling let's talk about some of the things that starlink brings to the table uh with regards to a a disaster response so one of the main things that Starling brings to the table is that it's essentially internet connection right now for the first time essentially ever most people have access can can have access to the internet via a satellite constellation mostly anywhere in the world for a very reasonable price of course satellite internet in itself is not new this has been around for a long period of time just sterlink is a a new way of thinking about that sort of problem as someone who been a ViaSat customer and you know using the old school hughet stuff even uh this just does not hold a candle to any previously uh available satellite internet Network and because of this a lot of people are just going straight to this uh in the world of Disaster Response and they're they're kind of maybe not um maybe not completely removing HF radio from the equation but they're sidelining it a lot of times because this starlink can bring so many other capabilities to the table that HF R just can't do for me uh I prefer to use starlink because really in Rural America it's really all you've got uh I have uh sterlink residential for my home and it is it is literally it there there's no 5G anywhere most of my area does not even have 4G uh so I couldn't even use a Wi-Fi hotspot really any effectively so it's really all we've got uh and in cases like this on an everyday basis starlink has really been a godsend for Rural America where the telecom's infrastructure just doesn't exist now in terms of the actual starlink mini itself we see this idea carrying forward when it comes to Disaster Response people are just going to these and they're sidest stepping radio a lot of times or more specifically HF radio uh for some of their Regional Communications needs and one of the things that starlink in particular brings to the table that HF radio uh has has been not so good with doing and and radio at large has not been uh very good with is privacy and security this has been something that uh has weighed on my mind since the hurricane Helen response and uh I I think that it's something that the ham radio world really needs to to reflect on and and figure out and that is the concept of privacy and security of course when we're talking HF radio here this is a public service essentially this is amateur radio it has been granted permission to Exist by the government and unfortunately anytime you're using uh especially je radio you're using your FCC approved call sign which is linked to your real name your real information your mailing address and that information is public okay so anyone can figure out everything there is to know about you just because you're trying to use an emergency tool that is suboptimal on the best of days but during an emergency it becomes a very big problem uh so there's concerns for security on the side of the operator okay and there's also concerns on the side of the information itself once again there privacy doesn't exist on HF radio it just doesn't there's no such thing at the moment as encryption on HF radio there are some ways of encrypting handheld radios that's a lot that's a lot easier to do but when it comes to HF radios to my knowledge there aren't any yet um there will be I'm sure but right now there's no such thing as encryption on HF radio in the civilian space now why does this really matter right if you're during a disaster do you really need privacy well I think of two ways that came up during the hurricane Helen uh response that that uh uh I noted and the first reason you might want privacy is casualty figures uh unfortunately the ham radio Community for whatever reason even the guys trained on this sort of thing they do not have the concept of HIPPA or pii protection because the ham radio world has been open and free and nothing bad has happened to them yet for whatever reason uh they just the most ham radio operators have no concept of privacy or data protection these people will use their real names on the internet they will you know um they they just don't have any kind of concept of anonymity now obviously anonymity is a little bit important to me but even if it's not totally Anonymous I really don't want to be talking about things that are very sensitive over the radio for HF stuff for region-wide communications anything you say over HF radio is going to be picked up unless you're using some kind of privatized code that you create yourself we can talk more about that in in due time but for right now you have to realize that a secure Wi-Fi connection you know an email a phone call something like that is is going to be a lot more private than blasting out information over the radio for instance you don't want um everyone during the Helen situation locally was listening to the repeaters right they even listening to these repeaters streaming over the internet and a lot of private information just you know inevitably gets leaked and it's something that you you want to be mindful of and this leads into the second thing which is If someone knows that they're going to hop on their radio and you're going to talk about them over the radio for the whole world to see and even streaming online um they may be less inclined to ask for help so once again something specific to the hurricane Helen crisis uh response is initially the LIF limb property kind of emergencies that got handled okay but as the disaster progressed you notice that about two to 3 weeks after the main you know surge of Aid into the region there was another Spike uh of of people who needed help and this this continues even to this day to be honest occasionally you'll see big pretty big spikes well what is this this is people who waited who were prepared they were prepared to sit in their homes for two weeks they were uh prepared to live out of their car for a period of time but uh as time went on they needed help so they're not going to be first in line again honor integrity dignity you know discretion is part of Disaster Response we may not think it is but it is so what you had is a lot of people who had no preparedness ability whatsoever they were the first people in line for the Helen Aid uh supplies right people who without generators people without heaters anything like that they were the first in line right that's fine we can we you know we can learn the lesson of preparedness later on but a couple of weeks afterwards you had the people who were resisting they didn't the people who did not want to be first in line but they needed help okay and these people were monitoring the radio and they were listening and they were seeing all these people hit up the repeaters saying hey look I need help here's my name and address and they knew that people were going to be talking about this over the radio so you had people who again I can't give you a specific spe ific example of this for privacy reasons but also um it's just a general theory of mine as well um that I think that there were a lot of people with the Helen response that did not ask for help because they knew their price of private information was going to be transmitted over the radio and I think that if someone knew that you had a private email you know or a private cell phone number or signal okay or some kind of private messenger and they needed to contact a spefic specific person that they knew was working the response they could get the help they needed without advertising that they're vulnerable okay this is a huge thing call it pride call it ego whatever but it's a huge thing in terms of Disaster Response so I think that having starlink and the ability to to allow people to have more discretion uh with their Disaster Response helps a lot whereas if they know that Timmy's going to hop on the radio here and broadcast you know the their medical condition over the radio you know they may be disinclined or they may be a little bit um hesitant to to call for Aid again because you're not talking about the people who initially surged in you're talking about the people two to three weeks later the smarter than the average bear people but they still need some help the people who wait three weeks to go get some help from a disaster they're going to be smarter than the average bear and they're going to be of monitoring these radio things so this has become uh kind of a a thing since the disaster right we're going on a couple of months now and it's just something that I've noticed so having starlink and the ability to have a little bit more private uh exchange of information helps quite a lot another series of uh reasons why you might want to consider starlink in addition to the radio stuff you're working on is really kind of three main ideas commonality uh the ease of use and the ability to equip a large number of people all at once for instance starting with the last one I can set this up take it out of my backpack and set it up and I can have a dozen people uh working off of this I can set it up at a folding table and I can put five or six people to work on one single folding table uh working on all kinds of intelligent stuff so I can set up a talk based around this one device right here I could do that as well with HF radio but it's going to be a little bit harder to do it takes a lot of time you're you got to figure out where your your um the places where you're going to set up your radios are going to be heavily dependent on terrain right so uh this allows me to set up a talk a in a little bit more um using the space that I have access to right guaranteed you show up to a disaster Zone and guess what people with more say and Authority than you are going to have already picked the best spots for your antenna to be set up so you show up with your fancy HF radio and find out oh that tree that I was going to use has already got more important people's antennas on it than me so you don't want to be messing with that kind of stuff you don't want to be adding to burdens right so if you're able to just pull this out slap it on your backpack or even just throw it anywhere on the ground and you're able to operate that's a huge factor that I think not a lot of ham uh guys think about a lot when it comes to integrating their radios and of course it's easy right it's a lot easier to use now again we we're getting into the realm of comparing uh you know apples oranges kind of thing so uh it's not really something that you can compare this you just plug in throw on the ground the HF radio of course needs the antennas needs cables all kinds of stuff computers to run it batteries this kind of thing so in terms of actual Personnel I'm not going to trust a non-radio guy to put up my HF radio antenna I'm just not whereas I can get any goober walking by to say hey throw this outside you know it's a little bit easier to do and you know this is a factor that you really do have to plan for now again at the expense of saying look starlink is is just you know the best thing since slic bread let's talk about some of the disadvantages because there are there are a few and a few of these reasons are why you can't get rid of your HF radio and just go to starlink so one of the main reasons why you can't just ditch your HF radio and go right to uh starlink uh if you are an HF radio guy and uh you're going to a disaster uh one of the reasons why you may want to not really do that is is fairly simple starlink is using somebody else's Communications infrastructure the whole point of HF radio Okay the entire point of this is to have a truly offgrid EXP experience okay just in case the grid totally goes down okay think apocalyptic kind of scenarios to where the grid completely goes down now unfortunately the radio world uh from the Tactical guys in radio to the ham uh side of things unfortunately both sides have kind of the same problem and that is uh risk assessment and risk mitigation right so we have to be mindful of the fact that at some point the US government can walk walk into star Link's headquarters and say at the end of a gun barrel this is mine now we're going to militarize starlink kick everybody else off except for these terminal numbers that are that we own of course uh the same exact thing could have happened with you know iridium satellite phones it's the same kind of idea you're you're offloading your infrastructure to somebody else's infrastructure so anytime that happens if you like I've said many times if you don't own the wire the physical medium that your communication is traveling through okay if you're relying on somebody else to string up a wire or in this case a satellite you're going to be at the mercy of the people who did that okay so again you do not own the Starling constellation you're just a customer and they can cut you off at any moment now How likely is that well this gets into risk assessment doesn't it so one of the things that has really been been a huge problem is risk aversion when it comes to Communications now me personally uh I am going to use both of these tools okay if I have access to them I'm going to use them the problem is is that sometimes we may be tempted to to rely on starlink and then our uh radio communications networks kind of take a backseat and that's a little bit of a problem because again radio is a proficiency based thing this is a Wi-Fi router okay so you don't need any skill here and it's a whole other system whereas the HF radio stuff requires practice requires dedication all that kind stuff another main reason that people might be very much against uh the inclusion of starlink into their systems uh is they think that they're somehow on the front lines in the war in Ukraine and this this concept of risk assessment or or improper risk assessment or rather they ass people assess the risk than improperly uh factor in mitigation techniques this being done improperly has resulted in some cultural things for instance how many times have you heard a radio expert say something uh some kind of tactic technique procedure some kind of radio or something will get you killed right how many times have you heard that my ranting my ranting and raving on this topic was the first time I've actually you know gone masked up for a video and things like that because it's such a strong thing that I think people miss a lot of times so uh when it comes to things that will get you killed you have to understand that you're not not in Ukraine okay you may be one day you may be on the front lines in some kind of uh you know war zone but here's the deal if I'm out trying to help people recover from a hurricane I'm going to use the tools that I have okay with a full understanding that I'm not going to rely on this totally if starlink goes down right during the middle of hurricane Helen uh recovery efforts if starlink went down or if the government said no more starlink for civilians or something like that or the Chinese shot down all all the thousand of satellites okay fantasy land for a moment if that happened I could have gone to my HF radio Okay because I'm using both of these in conjunction with each other so so you have to remember where you are so I'm not going to sit there and say for you know tell soldiers on the you know to carry one of these on deployment you know like with you that's that's utterly insane you know I guess unless you're a Navy Chief and don't understand what Tempest means um this is going to be a very very bad thing for soldiers stationed at military institutions or military bases overseas not good right if you're in a Frontline trench in Ukraine okay yeah this probably will get you killed because this is a Wi-Fi router and it's communicating with satellites that can easily be detected so your position is is kind of given away but are you in Ukraine out here in Western North Carolina no you're not if any kind of nation state actor is at play and potentially targeting you then this obviously isn't going to be the tool for you however by the time you get to that point I think we're kind of in fantasy land so one of the big problems that I have seen time and time again in the world of radio is people not understanding risk mitigation they can assess the risk okay they can assess it just fine but mitigating it they can't understand so all I all I'm trying to say is that if I have somebody if I have a radio guy who is so risk averse that he shows up to the hurricane Helen you know Supply or food distribution center and uh we need you know pallets of water unloaded from this vehicle to this vehicle and I say hey you know Hop On Hop on you know your bowang I'll be you know in a couple of warehouses over uh dealing with that and he says no no no I'm not going to use my radio because mcon you know missions control you know the Russ the Russians are watching or the NSA is tracking me like I'm I'm going to get somebody else to do the job because someone who shows up to a hurricane disaster relief thing thinking that they're on the front line of Ukraine is not good that's just too risk averse for me I'm going to get somebody else to do the job now that doesn't mean that we're going to just start using our tools willy-nilly like it's a completely permissive environment right we we hear these terms on on Reddit all the time right permissive environment non-permissive environment this is the United States of America in 2025 we're we're in the middle of of these two extremes it's not entirely permissive but it's not entirely non-permissive either so when it comes to integrating starlink in terms of security risk emissions control things like that that's going to be on you to figure out you know all I know is that if I need to contact people uh and and maintain some level of communications with with other people and they don't have HF radio I'm not going to be worried about the Russians you know dropping ammunition on my head at this you know current time for this current thing so again you're going to have to have an understanding of what your tools actually are used for now again when we start to slip into the more um interesting times I'll say well yeah let's let's go back and let's start using you know radio more deliberate HF radio stuff that's a little bit more secure right or or a little bit more um conscientious of being Direction found and things like that but if I've got somebody out there who's concerned about somebody Direction finding him while they're trying to chainsaw trees out of the road I'm just going to get somebody else to do the job because that's not the right environment so when it comes to cons the cons of sterlink that's pretty much it as far as I'm concern concerned really I'm sure there are others but and I'll talk about some minor ones in a minute uh but the biggest ones that are going to be hard for people to kind of wrap their minds around are the fact that it's somebody else's wire so it's somebody else's infrastructure you're you're on the grid when you're using starlink the grid is just not on you know the terrestrial Earth you have Ground Control stations but you're getting internet uh even though the local grid may be down so the grid still exists you're just shifting it to space right so thing one you're not off- grid when you're using a St star link you're bringing the grid to you you're shifting and using a different kind of grid and two Emissions Control right obviously if things get squirly and you don't want people to know where you're at starlink is probably a bad tool for you so basing your entire existence around an internet connection is probably not a good idea that's why we need to still maintain radio tools as well now some of the other cons are fairly minor but I will mention them because it is important I guess first of all starlink isn't free okay you've got to pay the bill it's a b basically a telecom's bill so uh you can get different plans for these uh sorts of things depending on what your needs are I personally at the moment use the uh Rome plan so I get 50 gigs of internet for $50 a month but again that's an extra Bill and a lot of people can't can't afford an extra 50 bucks a month um but considering the alternative is to buy a several thousand you know HF radio rig you know to me the cost of that's kind of negligible to be honest um but if you need it you need it if you don't you don't you can pause the service so if things are getting a little tight and you need some some some uh leeway on that and you you want to have it around but you don't want to actually use it as much you can pause the service and things like that and my plan is since I'm going to be probably downloading more than 50 gbt of you know map data and satellite imagery during a crisis my general plan is to uh use this uh this what I normally do dayto day uh you know off and on once or twice a week I can download something you know download some more satellite imagery but during a crisis I can upgrade I can use this internet connection to upgrade to the bigger plan the was like $165 plan or something like that which is unlimited so in terms of cost it's not too bad but it is something to factor in most people nowadays who who might be benefiting from something like this it's going to be hard to give you know to to float an extra 5050 bucks a month towards something like this but again that is a cost uh the dish itself is I think it retails for $600 right now but you can frequently get it on sale uh especially considering a lot of the retailers Like Home Depot and some other hardware stores they offer military discounts if you have that sort of thing so you can you can get this pretty heavily discounted uh occasionally several times during the year good luck finding a radio um that's cheap it's just not going to happen so again cost of something to factor in so I thought I'd mention it another thing to factor in is battery power what I prefer to use for battery power are these energy cubes uh again this is just a a a fairly common power bank you can buy on Amazon fairly robust uh for for what for what it is it says at 70,000 milliamp hours which I think translates to let's see 259 wat hours uh and in real world use this exact uh power bank here with moderate use on my uh starlink I can get about 6 hours now if I'm downloading something heavy or if I'm uploading content uploads what burns it a lot more seems to seems like to me I don't know for sure but if I'm uploading like a 4K video uh we're we're talking about you know maybe 4 hours like that's that's the planning factor I would have for this but you know that's something to to consider whereas your HF radio uh is going to be able to run for a lot longer so again HF radio R this is a z90 20 W radio so we're talking kind of comparable in terms of power usage but this pulls so much less because of the duty cycle it's not transmitting all of the time this is so you're going to if you're strapped for batteries and this of every disaster batteries batteries batteries are are a huge problem right so if you start getting low on your battery Starling gets unplugged and we we we uh use that juice in the radio so uh because the radio is more of an emergency uh tool in say a local area than say starlink is but again that's it's kind of debatable I guess so you know starlink is a pretty good tool right uh I think I think this kind of has has proven especially the hurricane Helen response has proven that the need for starlink is is going to be around for a long period of time and if nothing else even if you don't see the use for starlink now uh you may at a later time because here is something that a lot of the radio guys don't want to hear and that is a lot of the ham radio Community a lot of the guys using Ham radios they may not think they're intentionally doing it but a lot of the times in the radio world a technology is um not preferred it's not used it's intentionally left out capabilities are intentionally degraded because people want to use uh their equipment okay you you find this in in a lot of other places too but uh in the radio world you show up to a disaster and you have needs okay and you have capabilities that you need to fill those needs and the radio guys are it's sometimes it's a swing and a miss uh because the radio guys don't want to modernize they don't want to think of anything new they just want to use the toys they got and unfortunately that's a problem and that's even more of a problem if you show up to a disaster and all you've got is your HF radio you know you're you can be an asset you can make yourself useful but you're also going to be it's like bringing a horse and buggy you know to a drag race you everybody else is going to be using starlink so they're going to be wondering what you bring to the table so the pressure is going to be on you more to provide more with your radio because again starlink cannot fulfill all of the needs radio can be used to talk to people who may not have uh starlinks in the local area but again this is going to the starlink is already started to put the pressure on HF radio to become relevant and become useful and more importantly it's put that pressure not on the radio technology itself but on the operators so operators are going to have to modernize and think of ways of becoming uh efficient because they've got a competitor now so you know that's that's something to keep in mind uh as we move forward so what does starlink replace well it doesn't replace radios because radios have a use even region-wide radios like this because during the hurricane Helen recovery uh efforts people were were coming from outside of handheld radio range so a lot of people think disaster strikes I'm going to be all good because I've got my bowang and say repeaters in the area that's a good thing to have okay it's important and it was very useful during this hurricane crisis however region-wide coms is important too because the aircraft they're going to be bringing in supplies are not going to be within your region so you may be talking to people two or three or four state over who are trying to help you in your area especially when it comes to the flow of information so uh that's why you know this is kind of an important thing also Western North Carolina in particular not a high income area right so not everybody's going to have the ability to Shell out $600 plus 50 bucks a month for a starlink they're just not even going forward is just not feasible for most people I would think in who live in the area who need this kind of thing so what what can they do well they can buy a$ 3040 $50 bow thing and call it a day so that's why these radio tools you can talk from HF radio to HF radio and that local HF radio operator can then tell the ban guys what's what's coming in the region all without starlink now again starlink will do this better but uh the requirement is still there for radio so again starlink is not going to replace this radio but what will it replace in my opinion starlink going to put iridium out of business this satellite phone I was paying at one point I think $75 per month for one single hour of talk time and that hour of talk time got broken up if I wanted to say a text message so if it took me 15 seconds to send a text message well then that would be uh 15 seconds off my 1 hour and that was the plan that I had and that was one of the cheapest Legacy plans because I had this for many many years uh that's utterly ridiculous you're talking High spe you know 4K streaming capable kind of internet here this is just not worth it anymore so um I can't like the chances of where I'm going to need a satellite phone but I also cannot bring this dish with me of course the size comparison is is a thing but just in terms of cost like man I'll eat that cost this is 20 bucks cheaper a month and if it means I just got to carry an extra pound in my pack I'll I'll do it if it means I don't have to use this so so again I think that starlink is going to kind of put uh the the traditional satellite phone uh infrastructure out of business and you kind of see this with Garmin kind of going the way of the dodo when a lot of these direct toell uh satellite features start kicking in um we still probably got a few more years left but still like look you know this is this is way way more um worthwhile than than your traditional satellite phone so um you know unless you absolutely positively know 100% of the time you're going to need this but this will not do unless you're that specific of a user I would say just go with the starlink like if you're in the market for a satellite phone you know starlink is probably a better option for you 99% of the time so in terms of actually using starlink alongside your radio what does that look like well I can tell you what it looks like very simply usually you roll up to a static location or say even burning out of a mobile vehicle starlink gets put up starlink forms the core of the talk because this wi-fi router can be used with a lot of the other tools I'll mentioned in a moment uh software tools to to enable collaboration and things like that and that's the core of your talk now uh you can get star link up and going you can start getting the data feeds in start download start hooking people up with uh you know your your password and things like that while you are uh setting up your HF radio if you're in a position where you can do that uh again really uh it's going to look a lot different depending on what your Disaster Response is but I have found that having as many information sources as possible helps a lot for instance you can use HF radio to share information reports from ham uh you know ham R operators around the region and the radio man who's running the HF radio can then send those reports out via the guys you know with bow fangs starlink uh can be used for data feeds uh internet-based data feeds and for uh region-wide Communications say like um a disaster briefings higher level command kind of things like that so this is going to be useful for that and both of these sources together the radio side of things and the internet side of things can be fused together right by by an individual person analyst radio guy whatever and then the relevant information be packaged up and sent out via UHF VHF radio or even mesh tastic right uh because this is an internet router just to dip into mesh tastic a little bit I know there's a lot of contention with it sometimes uh from amongst the uh traditional radio guys but you can set up an mqtt server and basically have a a mesh tastic device velcro to the back of this and now you've got Global mesh tastic capability so that's very powerful if you start uh start getting into that sort of thing but we'll we'll have to talk about that more specifically later on ideally in a perfect world and a perfect Disaster Response everything that you do via radio can be done with starlink just better right and and that way if you have if you come at it from that mindset uh then that way if you lose starlink either you run out of battery or some kind of malign action takes it down you can then transition back to radio right assuming and and and being okay with the uh degradation of capabilities so that's just kind of the way that that this works you can have the take the Bedrock of radio and have that be the way you normally do things all the reports you'd push out all the contacts all the call signs and things like that that you would normally talk to well you can talk to them the same way VIA starlink even like a video chat or something like that but if starlink goes down you can transition back to radio very very easily uh that's why you don't want to rely on starlink so much right now because we're in this kind of weird transition space where it's still still kind of a new thing but it's going to become very powerful but during a Disaster Response you also don't want this to be your sole source of information so that's why it's important to to keep radio integrated just because this may go down someday so what are we going to use uh starlink for specifically well like I said all the reports that you would normally exchange via radio it can be done via starlink but there are a few things that you can't really do uh of course we're not not going to primarily be using starlink to scroll Instagram that's just not what we're going to be using it for most of the time we're going to be using this for communications and by that I mean uh Voiceover IP VI Communications with people outside the region or up at a higher level of Disaster Response kind of thing um or you're going to be using it for uh attending Regional briefing so just as a little you know kind of a side note you may be a radio guy you may be working hard cutting trees or something like that during a Disaster Response well every day there's probably going to be a regional Regional wide briefing you know either via Zoom or Microsoft teams or something like that and you may get a lot of information about where things are headed if you're able to tune into it you see what I mean so you you may be able to have a lot more resources otherwise you're going to be you're going to be Fir and blind here uh with regards to the HF radio stuff so uh you you may want to you know at the end of the tune in to say the regional briefing other briefings around the country even mainstream media to see what mainstream media is talking about it uh the crisis that you're currently working these kinds of things really do help and since I'm in the world of you know information and intelligence processing this is very very very handy especially for dudes on the ground who have done nothing but listen to their bow Fang all day and they don't have that wider picture that strategic picture normally you would have to get that strategic picture via HF radio and just do the best you can but as times of modernized being able to tune in to say a FEMA briefing or something like that or get get the daily rollup email you know that's going to be very very handy for determining how this how this progresses down the road so another main use for St link is team collaboration so this can be because this is an internet connection once again I can set up mesh tastic and have an mqtt server going so that the local people the local mesh tastic people in an area can then be captured by this uh mesh tastic that's hooked up to say a computer right this connected to the internet and that can be broadcast throughout you know the mqtt servers I have set up uh or even the public ones really so there's that uh but you can also do things like Tac or aack instances so you can set up a tack server using this and everybody that's out there in the field as long as they're within radio range of of of your uh a Wi-Fi router here doesn't have to be within Wi-Fi range as long as it's you know radio range they'll be able to have that information sync with a a higher level server and managed from outside the Zone another thing too is is again people outside of the zone are always looking for something to do I can't tell you how many people uh who were not located in the disaster Zone but contacted me wanting to help you know that's a huge thing and uh unfortunately most of the time you when they're prior to starlink you just have to do the best you can with HF radio now somebody can be sitting in London and typing a report for me and an hour later I check in at a certain time and turn my star link on at a certain time and download it right very very handy uh the the things you can do with the internet that you can't do with HF again it's just not worth comparing because it's just so much more another thing that a lot of the ham guys don't want to think about is specifically check-ins back at home and what I mean by that is a lot of radio guys seem to forget that they're the only person in their family who knows how to use their HF radios so say for instance somebody who lives in Raleigh North Carolina hears about the issues in their own State they want to drive five or six hours away to go help fantastic they take their HF radio and they get to a place where there's no comms all they have is their HF radio to to contact you know the outside world but their family back in Raleigh doesn't know how to use radio so it would be in a perfect world okay to drive all the way out somewhere and use your HF radio to talk to your family back at home but with HF radio it's complicated and it's always expensive right so it's one of those things where you've got a radio guy who needs to use a cell phone network or hook up with starlink you know because he realized oh wait a minute I haven't talked to my family all day and I was supposed to check in you know but they don't have the ab like I have HF radio tools they just can't receive it so that's a huge thing that a lot of radio guys don't think about is you're going to need to check back in with your family a lot of times and uh a lot of times your families are not going to have the ability to use the same tools you do so if you live in a family where that's a good thing then fine but that's that's not that's not most people I don't think so um starlink allows you to do that a little bit easier send a text message you know um or some kind of you know email or something uh so your family doesn't have to worry about stringing up an antenna you know in your backyard because you're 6 hours away and the only way you have to communicate back to home is the radio you know um so something to keep in mind so once again star Link's main use is going to be Communications again the same thing as we might use our radios for just different audience different use different use case another main use uh for me at least is mapping uh more specifically things like arcgis online and other kinds of uh mapping platforms I mentioned ACH earlier um but that's more of a small team specific use uh a lot of you are kind of familiar with the project I'm kind of working on right now which is uh to use ARC JS Online Web maps to have a oneclick one tap uh link to an online map that as long as somebody has Wi-Fi access such as with starlink they can view the map and see exactly what's going on in their area they don't need to download an app they don't need to download anything they just need to go to the web browser on their phone and they can get to this so that's one of the things that's going to be helpful again um arcgis Pro for instance if you start getting into the more heavy GIS mapping platforms not everybody's going to get into this but but for me it's really data heavy okay so you may get into an area and realize that you don't have enough data layers you don't have a satellite imagery you don't have the files you need so you got to download them and it's going to take 10 15 gab sometimes you know depending on what the area is in a perfect world we could roll around with you know 15 16 terabyte hard drives you know we wouldn't have to worry about this sort of thing but if you're planning to to go outside of your region if you're the amount of data you may sometimes need is is more than you can store uh or at least for me personally it's more than I can store um but so so that's why you may need a a a starlink system to to download imagery satellite imagery for one current satellite imagery um all kinds of intelligence products things like that so that's something that I use starlink for heavily um it's of course ideal to to have things both ways so that again if starlink is not available I could still use um GIS products to make maps on my own computers and then send that out to whoever I need locally uh without using the internet okay that's that's fine but you also have to remember that we're talking big stuff here and in terms of most dis FS you're really going to have uh communication problems on a lower scale than you might think you would again this gets kind of nerdy and stuff like that but just know that for a lot of the mapping stuff that I do so a lot of the intelligence products that I kind of create I need to be able to download a lot of data uh that I can't really store ahead of time things like current satellite imagery or stuff like that are are very very important to the work that I do which is why it's it's important to have uh on hand also intelligence gathering if that's something that you're kind of into and you're trying to figure out where disasters are at Hurricane Helen perfect example a lot of the information came from Facebook you know uh it wasn't coming via radio a lot of it came via Facebook uh a lot of it via Twitter social media Pages a lot of um Church websites things like that uh and yeah um you know B thingss and you know HF radios and the radio side of things are great if you have a lot of people that you know how to use them but really Facebook and social media is just going to be where you're going to get most of your uh intelligence collection during a lot of disasters and that's just the way that it is and relying on your own uh Sterling system is really is really good so that you can reduce the demand for other people uh one thing that kind of came up sometimes is uh people showing up to an area or showing up to say a Wi-Fi hot spot and not realizing that sterlink as amazing as it is it ain't fiber optic right so you can you get you get a dozen people on one of these bad boys and you're going to bog it down pretty good especially if everybody's just frittering around on their phones you know so these things are not perfect the speeds you know the internet speed out out for me here in the middle of nowhere is pretty good you know I'm okay with you know 30 megabits downloads but you know somebody who's maybe used to living in a city with good fiber optic cable they're they think wow you know I can do a thousand times better than starlink well yeah that's that's true but remember for me out here there is no other option it just doesn't exist so uh in terms of reducing demand for resources if I'm going to show up someplace and I'm going to be expected to go to work they're going to give me a laptop or I'm going to bring my own laptop and I'm going to plug into their networks and things like that and try to help where I can I want to reduce the burden that I bring okay and if I'm going to sit there and say hey guys you mind if I use your starlink to download 100 gab of imagery I'm I don't want to I don't want to be that guy so I'd rather bring my own you know and uh and reduce the demand that I have on the system you shouldn't show up as a you know prepared citizen to respond to a crisis and add to the crisis right so with all of that out of the way let's talk about some of the more specific things you can do to integrate starlink into your your plan a little bit better uh the first thing that you may want to do when you get any kind of if you're using a starlink mini or even a bigger one you know the the main starlink kind of thing um the very first thing you may want to do when you get it is uh take a label maker ideally or just a piece of tape if you you know uh if you don't have a label maker and write down the network SSID and the password for this dish and stick it to the back okay because you especially if you're using a hidden network like I do so I have this configured to be hidden network that way when I show up to some place with 15 other starlinks uh my network isn't being broadcast out there now of course it is so anybody with any kind of signals intelligence or signant capability is obviously going to see my device but but people won't be able to try to access it um and they just won't even know that it's there so a lot of times you know I'm not trying to hide from the NSA but if somebody like a poacher or something going through the woods you know suddenly gets a notification on their phone oh oh connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot yeah that might be a little that might not be such a good idea right so I make mine a hidden network and I write down the SSID and the password so that people who know to look for it who are close to it can find it and it's one of those things that just kind of helps a little bit now one of the other other things that you may want to do when you get your star link and you kind of integrate it is change the power cable out because it's going to come with this really long power cable that you don't really need and this big wall wart um you're not going to probably power it from a wall wart uh out in the out in the field so I kind of leave that at home don't use that and I instead have gone to uh one of these let see if I can get it to focus here which is simply the starlink barrel connector with the little waterproofing uh Rings there and on the other end is just a USBC power delivery cable now all this does is this plugs in to the back of the starlink mini like such plugs in and it's weather resistant on this end now so I can put it outside my tent or on top of my tent and then run the cable back down inside to my USB power delivery power bank right very easy uh common modification people are doing these nowadays starlink is even uh started to I think sell these either now or at some point in the future so that they don't have to use the the wall wart kind of thing so again you can buy these they're they're fairly cheap uh and I just keep a couple hanging around now one of the cool things about the starlink mini is that this cable here this the standard uh DC Barrel connector also fits my laptop so if you have a Panasonic uh ecosystem of laptop you can actually use the same P power cable for your laptop uh for your Starling so again my uh laptop here usually I usually like to run this off of USB PD as well uh so once again just a standard Barrel connector this one doesn't have the waterproofing rings so this is not going to make it waterproof but it plugs in to my laptop to charge it via power bank but it also works there too so again shared commonality you only have to have one cable um and more importantly if say for instance where did it go uh this cable here it falls off your starlink falls off of something where it was perched and snaps off the uh the USB end which has happened before to me uh if that happens uh you have a backup so you can still power your starlink uh with with a common cable speaking of falling off of things uh one thing that I would very strongly recommend uh to use with any St Linker keep kind of in your kit are cam straps uh these are fairly uh fairly common nowadays uh you can buy these pretty much from anywhere uh they all they are are just simple uh straps like this these are of course the ubiquitous NRS strap anybody who's worked in kind of the Wilderness kind of game you know that NRS straps are kind of an industry standard in that regard but I just keep a couple of the the smaller 3-foot ones uh to attach the star length to things so what I can do is on the back here run the strap through this this thing here once it's kind of perched precariously on something and then strap it down so the wind doesn't pick it up this has happened quite a lot you set this up on like a porch railing or something wind immediately comes because it's essentially a sail right it's essentially a wing and it'll catch the wind and flip it right off it it sounds stupid to focus on this so much but this is such a des L helpful thing um of course you could just use paracord or a bungee or something but I like to use these because they're a little bit more sturdy same thing with your battery system now this battery like I have here I've got a cam strap wrapped around it but what I have done is I took just a smaller cam strap here let's see if I can get it to focus once again I have taken a uh one of these smaller cam straps and put some some of the hook side of Velcro on this little piece so that what I can do take my battery here and velcro it like such and now I can take my battery that's going to be there with the starlink I can take that battery and uh strap that to whatever I need so again it it sounds kind of stupid but it really does help especially if you're you're kind of moving around you're finding out well you know it just makes life a lot easier if if you're kind of unequipped equipped or or ill equipped uh to run your starlink say you forgot your vehicle Mount like you didn't bring a magnetic vehicle Mount but you need to use this while you're going down the road you can strap this to your roof you can strap this to your roof and the cable goes between and it's fine so again focusing on mounting options is helpful like I said you can get one of those magnetic uh vehicle mounts which helps if you know you're going to be operating out of a vehicle bring it along uh but for the most part I find that just using the starlink itself with some cam straps helps quite a bit sort of in a similar vein if you wanted to be Uber tactical what you could do is sew yourself a mesh bag for your uh starlink mini so let me just show you what this is all [Music] about all it is is a simple pouch and what I can do is open this up and take off the little leg here and put the starlink mini in the pouch which for once in my life I have actually sewn something that's the right size so it goes in the sleeve like such closes up and there's your starlink mini a little bit more camouflaged and because it has these clips you can clip this into say a pack lid so it's sitting on top of your backpack and then use the uh bungee straps here on the other side to uh to strap it down and you can run your power cable into that so this is sitting on top of your pack like on the on your pack lid and uh getting the best signal that it can now if if I were to do this again say for any gear manufacturers out there who are looking to make some of this kind of thing I would probably use a lighter weight mesh I was trying to go for kind of a camouflage effect as well so because obviously a you know 8 and 1/2 by 11 white rectangle out in the woods just kind of stands out and this green mesh helps a little bit uh but using a lighter weight mesh would uh degrade the signal less and this does degrade the signal uh it does but again since it's on the top of your pack it's hard to it's hard to figure out is it is it is the signal degraded because you're not at the proper angle or is the signal degraded because there's mesh in front of it I don't know I haven't figured this out I just know that I I don't like to move around with this like go backpacking through the you know back country with this on the top of my pack because it just doesn't work that well uh but you're experiences may vary it may get better once satell more once more satellites get up there but uh I thought I would mention this because this is a solution that I have kind of come up with uh for that for now but yeah uh you can uh make it so that you don't even have to take the if you were to make a slightly bigger pack a slightly bigger pouch you can make it so that you don't even have to take off the uh the little kickstand here but the kickstand is is in my opinion you you can take it off but I leave it on because it's not that much weight and I found that just for me using it statically this thing is really weirdly shaped so it's really hard you would think you could just get a rock or something right and you know lean it up against that well doesn't really work that well I found that this thing will slip off of pretty much anything you put it on so I don't know your again your experiences may vary but I just kind of leave the kickstand on it and use it in its intended kind of angle for that batteries let's talk batteries I've been using this with my HF radio for a while now for about a year actually uh these little portable power stations not this one specifically this one just came out a few months ago but I've been using the other ones with the cigarette lighter adapter here and I just have the cigarette lighter plug on my HF radio like so and I know this is probably heresy in the world of radio but I just plug it right in turn it on and I'm good to go like I've tried to find ways of this not work working but it really does work now of course the cigarette lighter plug you jostle it around you'll lose the connection your radio will turn off and that's inconvenient but man these portable power stations are super handy especially considering the alternative so the old way of powering HF radios is to use like life po4 batteries or what they're now called lfp batteries uh and they took forever to charge so either you trickle charging them via solar or not this these portable power stations I can plug in to a generator so if I come into camp or come into some kind of headquarters wherever some kind of Supply Depot and they've got generators running I can say Hey you mind if I plug in and charge my stuff I'm like yeah fine plug right into a wall outlet and in like 30 minutes this bad boy is topped off and I can just you know move and go good luck charging a traditional ham radio battery that quickly so these portable power stations are very crucial and because they have multiple Outlets I can uh say for instance if I wanted to use one of these um uh just kind of wall wart PD Outlet things and plug that right into the to the uh wall outlet on the portable power station and then I've got a couple extra ports now ideally this is again an efficiency loss kind of thing uh but again disaster preparedness it helps it really does so I don't want to be frittering around with some kind of homemade batter with a solar panel a charge controller wires going everywhere all that kind of stuff I just want something that works and you pay a premium for it it's going to be heavier it's going to be more inefficient and it's going to take up more space in your pack but I'm willing to make that tradeoff for these some of these smaller power stations or some of these larger PD Power Banks I'm willing to work with that because this charges at I think it charges at 100 Watts I may be wrong on that but it charges fast same thing with this one so you can charge these things really really quickly and be out the door uh especially from say like a generator or something like that so I think that pretty much wraps things up uh the the starlink system is something that's going to be around for a while uh it's not going anywhere and if you're wanting to use it a little bit more operationally hopefully this stuff has helped I know it's been kind of a longwind way to talk about it but um most of the content out there on on starlink system so far is basically just ah it's a cool thing and that's basically it but once you start using this a little bit more you start using the tools that you have access to you find that you have a lot more capabilities and now even if the lights are out there's no cell phone towers or anything I can sit there and have Enterprise level uh mapping Solutions voice calls higher level strategic kind of stuff uh I can collaborate with anybody around the world and that's really really hard to turn down even if it's it's not the best way of doing things 100% of the time so hopefully this has been helpful for you in realizing the utility of being able to access the internet from anywhere especially in offg grd environments cheaply uh and again I I hope to see a lot more of this being used in the future um but I also hope that we're able to take the challenges of radio and make so make some of these things a little bit more efficient in that regards as well again it's a fine fine balance isn't it you want to rely on the tools that you have but you don't want to over rely on them just in case they fail same thing with radio same thing with anything else so once again I hope this this is helpful in both showing that starlink has a place it's here for a while it's going to be here to stay in terms of Disaster Response for a long time but also that it doesn't replace radio if anything it replaces satellite phones but uh for the most part these these tools can be used together in harmony uh and they're they're definitely going to be very very useful for many disasters to come so so once again thank you for all of your support thank you guys for watching we will see you next time and as always fight in the shade