Reading the comment about Ukraine usage and the motor cogs drying out and failing - I have disabled the motors and have Dishy flat and no moving and it works great.
Heh. I was going to ask why you would do that, but then I looked over and read your location. No surprise though about military usage beating the crap out of the things. I'm more concerned about the life expectancy of the gears in regular service, but hopefully I'll be able to start timing that from tomorrow when my "Best Effort" dish gets here.
... snip ... hopefully I'll be able to start timing that from tomorrow when my "Best Effort" dish gets here.
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Quote from: Mandella on 08/28/2022 05:55 pmHeh. I was going to ask why you would do that, but then I looked over and read your location. No surprise though about military usage beating the crap out of the things. I'm more concerned about the life expectancy of the gears in regular service, but hopefully I'll be able to start timing that from tomorrow when my "Best Effort" dish gets here.I would expect much of that is from being moved regularly and possibly being used while moving. If the mechanism was designed for a stationary application and only being moved occasionally putting it on a truck would likely not be good for the gears at all. The gears aren't likely large and robust enough to tolerate rough handling while the dish is deployed. I expect the service life of an unmodified starlink on an oceangoing boat or ship will be even worse.
Quote from: rubicondsrv on 08/28/2022 10:35 pmQuote from: Mandella on 08/28/2022 05:55 pmHeh. I was going to ask why you would do that, but then I looked over and read your location. No surprise though about military usage beating the crap out of the things. I'm more concerned about the life expectancy of the gears in regular service, but hopefully I'll be able to start timing that from tomorrow when my "Best Effort" dish gets here.I would expect much of that is from being moved regularly and possibly being used while moving. If the mechanism was designed for a stationary application and only being moved occasionally putting it on a truck would likely not be good for the gears at all. The gears aren't likely large and robust enough to tolerate rough handling while the dish is deployed. I expect the service life of an unmodified starlink on an oceangoing boat or ship will be even worse.That may be one reason that the terminals being sold for marine use cost 5x (?) more. A lot of stuff needs to be ruggedized, and the gears may be one of them. I would think that in household use, the gears are rarely engaged, right?
With the bigger shipboard dishes, powered gears actually do very little work. The dish stays pointed by being perfectly balanced and will stay pointed fairly well even when unpowered if it isn't locked. Motors are for fine tuning and acquiring new targets.
I think the versions used on the cruise ships are fixed in place.
It looks like SpaceX is already working on next-generation dish hardware for its Starlink satellite internet service, according to FCC documents. On Tuesday, the FCC granted SpaceX a temporary license to test “new user-terminal hardware.” A document from the company adds the test will cover “next-generation phased array antennas” designed to connect to Starlink satellites. The hardware will include both fixed position Starlink dishes and those that can be used in motion, such as on a car, boat, or plane. The company plans on testing up to 200 models, featuring dimensions “not to exceed 0.586 by 0.385" meters in size (23 inches by 15.1 inches).That means hardware will be slightly larger than the second-gen Starlink dish for residential customers, which was introduced in November 2021. It too has a rectangular shape, but with the dimensions at 0.513 by 0.303 meters (20 inches by 11.9 inches). Meanwhile, the first-generation Starlink dish adopted a circular shape with a 23.2-inch diameter.
