Starlink in van testing

I have had my Starlink mini dish mounted via suction cups to the sunroof of my van for a while. I have been just powering it off the DC power point in my center console and off a small battery pack if necessary. Until now I have had to choose if I was bringing the big Jackery 2000 unit or only having power available when the van was running. For most things this is not too big of a deal however there have been a few shorter day trips that I would have liked to bring my electric cooler and hang out somewhere for a day. This meant not only loading the cooler but also the much larger and super heavy battery pack, not such a big ask for a weekend trip to the woods but much more annoying for a day trip. It also meant that if I wanted to use my Starlink at work I was limited to the 2 hrs that my small pack could do or again loading up the large pack. As such with all the OT I have been working I have purchased a middle ground battery, the Jackery 500v2. This unit has a 500W AC inverter and 500wh battery, meaning I can run both my fridge and Starlink off it at the same time. This smaller unit is also much easier to move around and doesn’t take up much space making it easy to leave in the van most of the time. With the AC inverter built into the van it doesn’t take much more than an hour to top the battery back up meaning a short drive between locations can almost fully recharge it.

Starlink mounting looks decent and is out of the way, protected and still very functional.

So far in today’s testing I have been using the Starlink for about 6 and the battery is just above 75%. It is looking very promising for my more short term trips.

Lastly I am going to throw in a photo of some cats lounging around that taunted Loki on our neighborhood walk after work yesterday.

Loki almost didn’t notice these guys on the walk.