Thinking about adding a flat mounted Starlink to your RV or van set-up? Read on to get insight from full-time travelers Alex and Megan on their experience.
Let’s face it, camping, car camping and RV’ing just ain’t the same anymore and that is largely due to technology. Technology like Starlink for instance. Whether it’s a bad or good change is up to you to decide. But let’s talk for a moment about the advent of Starlink and how it’s changed the RV/van life and car camping world.
Our Experience with Starlink
It was a little over two years ago that my fiance and I moved into our van to hit the road full-time. We’ve been mobile on the road ever since. The start of our perpetual trip was right around the time that Starlink was hitting the market. The idea of having non-cell service-based, high-speed internet was a pretty crazy idea and we were a little hesitant to believe it could be true.
If you’ve read a few of my articles here on RVshare, you’ll know that I’m one of those “YouTubers” who make videos for a living. In my travels prior to my fiance and I pushing off in our van, I only uploaded photos, so it was easy enough to just go to a wifi hotspot and make an Instagram post for the day check my socials then leave.
That all changed drastically the first time I went to upload a YouTube video at a coffee shop. I sat down expecting to be there for an hour, but when the video started uploading the estimated time showed a whopping 6 hours! As the coffee shop was closing in only a few hours I had to cancel the upload and hope that I could find somewhere the next day. Long story short, I didn’t, and not long after we were ordering Starlink. We never looked back. Now that we both have online jobs while living in the van, it’s crucial that we have a stable internet link while working.
How We Use It
I have said many times that Starlink has changed how we camp, and it really has. We spend a lot of time inside the van, we watch shows in the evening when settling in for the night, and we can have our phones feeding us information at all times. I think that this could easily be viewed as maybe not a great thing; however, we’re living in a van, not just camping. Just replace a stationary home with four walls of a van and a backyard for BLM land and you have our life. Starlink has really helped us accomplish and sustain this lifestyle. To add to that, we can now venture out further on our explorations to extra remote places knowing that wherever we go, we know we can call out for help, we basically don’t need phone plans any longer because we can use wifi calling and if anything goes wrong with our van, a fix is a YouTube video away. Recently Starlink has upgraded the standard plan to international, in-motion travel, so we’ll easily be able to use our Starlink stress-free as we travel south on the Pan American Highway all the way to Argentina.
Our Set-Up: Flat Mount and 12V
At present, we’re using the Gen2 Dishy and have modified it for use with 12 volts and flat-mounted the dish on our roof. If you want to see how all of that went I’ll include the YouTube video I made down below. The big benefit to swapping to 12 volts is it significantly lowers the draw on your house batteries and you no longer have to fire up the inverter to run it. By flat mounting, the dishy on our roof it’s super low profile, out of the way, doesn’t catch branches or low ledges, and is generally worry-free.
We drive with Starlink on everywhere we go so we have communication, navigation music, and podcasts at all times. As I write this, I’m out in the middle of nowhere in the Yukon wilderness, about 200 kilometers from any services. When I did the flat mount and 12-volt swap it was a bit of a challenge, however, nowadays there are a number of different services you can use to have the job done for a fee, or if you’re a competent DIY’er, there are a number of easy plug and play options to easily swap to 12 volt.
Flat Mount Tips
As for the flat mount, I strongly suggest using the splitting method vs the cutting method to separate the Dishy from the motor and stand, it’s much safer and significantly easier. I’ll make sure to include a few links to instructional videos of various ways to make the swap. There is also a Facebook group called Starlink Hacks, which is a great resource for DIYers who want to transform their Starlink. Starlink has also recently released their Mini Dishy which comes with a set gigabyte plan and can be run on 12 volts from factory, as well there is the Gen 3 Dishy which is an absolute monster and can see bit rates as high as 600mb/s but consumes lots of power.
Is It Worth It?
Overall, I think Starlink has been a great addition to life for those of us living full-time on the road, but has also freed up a lot of people for longer-term RV travel that perhaps couldn’t leave the office without a good wifi signal. I think Starlink has and will continue to change travel, allowing a higher level of security when venturing into remote places.
Thanks for reading! If you want to learn more about our travels or get eyes on our travels throughout North America, you can find us at Slow Roamers on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, or www.slowroamers.com.
- How NOT to do your Starlink 12-volt/ flat-mount swap
- Our Starlink troubleshooting and fixes
- DIY Starlink mount by our friend Max
- Great upgrades for your DIY Starlink flat mount and 12-volt swap
- Jason from Primal Outdoors
