Starlink Testing at 8,000 Feet on an Ultralight!

[MarkHuney]

Flew my paramotor up high enough to lose cellular service then turned Starlink on. It works great!

Full video:

I've been sitting on this video for a while. It's a video I was excited to make because it could open a lot of doors for paramotoring. Take my 1400 mile Mexico to Canada paramotor trip for instance. We covered vast areas with zero cellular service - especially if you were to end up on the ground in the case of an engine out. This would allow me to call for help and/or research the area for routes out, etc. It would be helpful in-flight for airport research if you had to find a secondary airport last minute. It has a lot of uses in flight really: communication, weather, navigation, etc.

Fun times.

What would you use it for in flight? Wrong answers welcome.

 

[rwellner98]

I don't use it in motion, but I do enjoy having it for camping.

 

[MarkHuney]

I don't use it in motion, but I do enjoy having it for camping.

View attachment 140589

Now that's a fun setup!

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Flew my paramotor up high enough to lose cellular service then turned Starlink on. It works great!

Of all the places where I would want to use the Internet, that one is at the very bottom of the list.

I've been sitting on this video for a while. It's a video I was excited to make because it could open a lot of doors for paramotoring. Take my 1400 mile Mexico to Canada paramotor trip for instance. We covered vast areas with zero cellular service - especially if you were to end up on the ground in the case of an engine out. This would allow me to call for help and/or research the area for routes out, etc. It would be helpful in-flight for airport research if you had to find a secondary airport last minute. It has a lot of uses in flight really: communication, weather, navigation, etc.

Modern iPhones (and I think some Android phones) can communicate via satellites as well, which is enough in case of an emergency.

What would you use it for in flight? Wrong answers welcome.

Anything! (<- that is, of course, the wrong answer.)

 

[MarkHuney]

Of all the places where I would want to use the Internet, that one is at the very bottom of the list.


Modern iPhones (and I think some Android phones) can communicate via satellites as well, which is enough in case of an emergency.


Anything! (<- that is, of course, the wrong answer.)

Yea, I'm not dying to use the Internet in flight either.

The video is more a proof of concept. It's not super practical. Of the thousands of flights I've done, this was the 1st with wifi. It is great emergency equipment to have if you've got the space, but ultimately for what we normally do, it is too bulky. T-Mobile partnered with starlink so when there's zero cell service, all you can send is texts, when it works (it's in beta), if you even have T-Mobile (I do so I've used it).

These 2 stroke engines don't always like to stay on. When we flew 1400 miles from Mexico to Canada, this setup could have saved our bacon if one of us had to land in a remote location. Sure there's Garmin inreach and this and that, but this is just one more unique option.