For the last 4+years, I’ve been running a WinLink VHF Gateway on 145.050MHz. WB4SON-10 is on 24/7 and has excellent coverage to the entire East-Bay of RI as well as the south coast.
WinLink is essentially an email system with global coverage. The idea is to use RF to connect to a WinLink gateway station that has the ability to connect beyond your local area of coverage. The gateway will forward your message via whatever path it has available. My gateway is normally attached to a commercial internet service. When things go sideways, the gateway remains on the air thanks to solar power and batteries. At that point it can connect via a satellite link to span beyond a local impacted area. If that isn’t working, it can use a HF link.
I purchased a StarLink Mini system that I can deploy in my back yard, or wherever I happen to be, as it allows “roaming” service connections. At the time, the service could be enabled or disabled whenever necessary, for $50 a month. I usually kept it disabled to avoid the monthly fee. Recently StarLink started offering a different “backup” plan for $10 a month with a 10GB per month data limit (you can purchase more data for $2 a GB if needed). Since WinLink is extremely efficient, it is almost ideal for that purpose.
My backyard is surrounded by large oak trees (perfect for deploying wire antennas on HF), but it is not ideal for a satellite based system. Nevertheless, the StarLink Mini provided me with very respectable internet speeds, even when more than half the sky was obstructed.
The StarLink Mini Satellite dish deployed on my backyard deck – it is about 1 foot square, and runs off a plug in supply or battery power.
The blue area above is clear sky. The red areas are obstructed by trees, or my house. (the display spins around so you can see a 360 degree view).
Despite the obstructions, the StarLink Mini delivered 189 Mbps down and 8 Mbps up speed. Those speeds would be much higher if I had a clear sky view.
