Starlink in Diamond

[bdbogle]

First flight in the plane with the Starlink and I'm impressed! Got anywhere from 3.5Mbps to 124Mbps with less than 50ms latency without pointing it in the optimal direction. Going to invest in a good 3d printed suction-cup mount shortly.

[Rich]

For everyone using a battery, please be careful. Lithium battery fires are no joke! I highly recommend everyone get appropriate ship's power hooked up ASAP. It's cheap to do, saves hassle (no need to recharge) and is significantly safer.

I have at least 5 of these in my plane on every flight.
My house currently has 12 I can think of off hand.
Then there’s my car, which I am informed by the internet will spontaneously burn my house down any day now.

Doomed, I am

[nickname]

For everyone using a battery, please be careful. Lithium battery fires are no joke! I highly recommend everyone get appropriate ship's power hooked up ASAP. It's cheap to do, saves hassle (no need to recharge) and is significantly safer.

I have at least 5 of these in my plane on every flight.
My house currently has 12 I can think of off hand.
Then there’s my car, which I am informed by the internet will spontaneously burn my house down any day now.

Doomed, I am

Yeah, I agree with the concept it would just be an incremental Lithium battery. But, hooking it up to power generated is much more convenient anyhow.

[jast]

Battery fires are extremely rare and mainly happen during charging. So I’m not feeling too bad about it. But I also agree that power provided by the plane would be better. Unfortunately in the DA62 there is no 24V plug anymore. Starlink could directly use it. So without any modification I’m not sure how to access the 24V power. Ideas?

[neema]

Doodling with a starlink mini showed it wouldn’t fire up with a 40w USB C charger I had in a car. Even though it runs at 10-30w, I think it needs a solid 60w+ to turn on.

This isn’t terribly cheap, but some of the mid continent 100w or 60w charger ports could be wired in.

A replacement fiberglass nose door would be pretty slick to keep the starlink out of the way. Not the best angle though.

Sorry if I missed it: are DA40 drivers able to use the antenna inside the cabin rather than on the glare shield?

[michael.g.miller]

Be careful with any USB-C solution. Many of them have power saving mechanisms that will interfere with Starlink.
The mid-continent solution in particular was called out on COPA as not compatible with Starlink.

Currently the only reliable way to get ship’s power to Starlink is via a cigarette lighter plug.

[nickname]

Cigarette lighter plug has worked flawlessly and is more versatile than a USB-C port anyway (for use of oxygen concentrator, charging devices, etc.)

[dmloftus]

Cigarette lighter plug has worked flawlessly and is more versatile than a USB-C port anyway (for use of oxygen concentrator, charging devices, etc.)

I second that, my cigarette plug is wired for 7.5A at 24V, 28V with engine running. Plenty for my Inogen, possibly a bit close if I also wanted to run Starlink.

[neema]

Mike, good find. Disappointing that Mid Continent's usb-C adapter won't do what's advertised. To be fair, I think most Cirri come with the PD65 usb-c plug. They also have a 100w version.

I've had bad luck with noisy (static) cigarette lighters but definitely enjoy the modularity of them. Could have been the model the avionics shop used.

[jast]

Hi!

Unfortunately, I have a bad PIREP from today using Starlink on my flight from Sweden back to Germany in a DA62. Even though the conditions were perfect Starlink was not allowing me to use the Internet for more than a couple of minutes. The error message was something like: “you are moving too fast. Your plan does not support high speed.” I tried to upgrade my plan to the €59 version and activated the priority per gigabyte option. However, that did not change the behavior. During the next takeoff I activated Starlink on the ground, monitoring it and trying to figure out when it would switch off, and according to my highly scientific measurement, it was at around 100kts because it stopped about 4 minutes after takeoff and the first 2 minutes were below 100kt. This is disappointing and strange, especially since it was working before. Maybe too many pilots were buying a Starlink mini and using it in the last weeks and they are now trying to get more money for the service? There is a “Starlink Aviation” plan but it’s more meant for jets with fixed installations and details are not public. I opened a ticket with the Starlink support trying to figure out if the speed limit changed, but I doubt they will give a good answer. Can anyone else confirm a different behavior? Or is it still working for others?

Regards,
Jan