00:00.10 archpodnet Welcome to the show. Everybody Paul how's it going. 00:03.13 Paul Um, it's going. Okay, really really busy lately as always lots of projects some bad family news that we're working through but um, also lots of really good feedback on some of our recent episodes that I'd like to talk a little bit about um, you're back in the country now. 00:10.18 archpodnet Um. 00:16.16 archpodnet Yeah I am we spent a week in Cabo San Lucas and never been down there before for those that don't know where that's at it's at the far southern tip of the Baja Peninsula which is the little the little spit that. Comes off Mexico just south of San Diego and it's like if you just kept driving south on the coast from San Diego you cross the border into Tijuana and then you're on the baha peninsula from that point on it's a state of it's in the state of sir I think is what it is because the um license plates say Bcs. So it's Baja California comma sir. You are and ah but it's a really cool place I mean Cabo is basically all canadians and americans so you know there's a Costco there's 2 Costcos there was one in Cabo San Jose where we flew into and there's one in Cabo San Lucas there's ah I think there's even like a Walmart or something like that. but yeah but there's then there's a lot of mexican flair too. We went into town a few times we were to resort this time around. But it's a really It's a really cool place I want to possibly spend a lot more time down there I want to do the California Rock art ah tours to the like the Baja. Ah. Pettograph sites that they go to I mean you have to take like a donkey a burrow for many days to get to these things and then many days to get back out, but it's just a really really cool place. It reminds me of the high desert in Nevada or more likely like. Arizona because there's cactuses. There's like their own version of like Siguaro cactuses. They're a little bit smaller and a little bit different but it's like ah it's like a unique species and the difference is they're sitting right on the pacific ocean and the south end is kind of on the. Convergence of the pacific ocean of the sio cortez so you get this really nice like offshore breezes that keep the humidity almost nonexistent and the temperatures pretty consistent throughout the year except for some slightly higher temperatures in the summertime and a little bit humidity when the rains come in. But. 02:17.88 Paul M. 02:20.94 archpodnet Otherwise it's such a cool place with a lot of history that I hope to be able to talk about on some of these podcasts coming up in the near future. 02:24.74 Paul I was kind of wondering about the history. Do you is there much archeology that you're aware of other than that rock art in the area. 02:30.85 archpodnet You know there has to be is all I can say I haven't researched it yet. But we are going back in April for a couple of weeks and I plan to really kind of dive into that when we. 02:38.43 Paul Um, who. 02:44.32 archpodnet When we go there and we might be going back there a little more long term after that at some point maybe not this year but at some point coming up in the future and it's just such a cool place and I'm thinking with the pictographs and the difficulty of how to get to those deep in the mountains of the ah of the Baja Peninsula I mean you don't just travel from like Mexico City to do that right? So there had to have been people living there I'm willing to bet it was because of the temperate nature of the area where it's just like nice all the time like you don't need a lot of shelter and covering and and I imagine like animals and. Ah, you know the cactuses and all that kind of stuff food and things with the sea right? There were probably plentiful and it's probably much like some areas on the California Coast where actually finding habitation sites could be a little bit of a problem unless they had like shell mounds and stuff. But I don't actually know it would. 03:34.25 Paul E. 03:39.94 archpodnet It's something I want to research though and then report back on the network. One of the shows that we have yeah and I might be doing that from kabo with a starlink satellite dish if I can get a mexican one that that leads us into this first segment on this sort of Poturri episode. We've got here. Where we've got ah a bunch of things we're trying to catch up on I've mentioned probably on this show I can't think of any time specifically. But ah, you know having being living in an rv. Ah internet is always a problem for us and one of the. 04:09.59 Paul What is it. 04:13.86 archpodnet Solutions to internet. It's not the full solution and it's not the only tool in your your internet toolbox but 1 of the solutions has been starlink internet and while you might be thinking if you're a traveling archeologist listening to this, you might be thinking. Well you know what could I do with starlink how could I possibly use that to be honest, you probably can. Because if you're living in hotel rooms and stuff they're more than likely not going to let you put your starlink dish on the roof and has to be able to point North which could be a problem if you're in a hotel or you're not going to run it out the door or something like that. But if you're if you work in the west and you know there are certain times of the year where you do a lot more camping projects. You do a lot more. Projects where they just give you cash per dm and and I know people that just go camp on like Blm um land maybe they have a van or a truck you see a lot of Toyota Tacomas that are modified for for sleeping in in the back and if you've got your starlink dish now you need Ac power to run it so you might have to do some other upgrades to whatever your mobile situation is you need. 04:59.18 Paul E. 05:11.42 archpodnet Some kind of an inverter this thing only pulls I don't know what it pulls when it's acquiring. But when it's running it only pulls about 40 or 50 watts which really is not that bad. The first generation starlin the the round 1 pulled over 100 and then they came out with gen two of the round one which was down around seventy or eighty watts and now we've got um. They call it dishy mc squarereface because the other one was dishy mc flatface and this is dishy mc squareface. It's the square rectangular version which I guess they just got more efficient with their their antenna inside there. It's smaller. It's lighter and it pulls less watts but does the same job. So. 05:45.27 Paul I Love how with your ah Van life you you know the wattage of everything that you carry along with you. 05:48.14 archpodnet Yeah I'll tell you what if you follow us on Instagram at Roadster Adventures R O D Sd E R Adventures that's my wife and I like combined you know channel for our travels. We've got a segment I want to do a lot more of that. It's called what's the watts. And it's basically super short. We're putting it on our upcoming podcast and some of our videos for the longer form version of that but still the longer form is like 30 seconds right but for the like Instagram reels version. It's basically looking at something. Looking at the panel that shows us we have a pretty fancy panel that shows us exactly what we're pulling at any 1 time we shut everything else off and then we turn this one thing on to see what's the startup because a lot of Ac appliances have ah a pretty high startup cost and it might pop your inverter right? If you don't have a big enough inverter to handle that like the air conditioning units. 06:30.62 Paul Um, who yeah. 06:39.75 archpodnet Have what's called a soft start on them. This is a special thing made just for air conditioning units so they can ramp up slowly because their initial kick on for that compressor will blow every circuit in your house in your rv so or even if you've got like a van or something like that all the Ac units were in basically the same way. Um, so yeah. 06:47.25 Paul Right. 06:52.98 Paul Um, do you have one of those ah those Kilowatt devices. Do you know what? I'm talking about. It's a little. It's a little white box that you put in in line between the outlet and whatever you want to plug into it and it'll tell you the ah the wattage that that the device is pulling. 06:58.32 archpodnet Ah I don't think so oh yeah, right. 07:12.56 archpodnet Um, yeah. 07:12.81 Paul So I have one actually I got it years ago I can't remember what project I needed for but I was curious about something and um and it's really helpful for seeing things that you wouldn't otherwise notice like all the vampiric power that like your Tv set does right? So a lot of things have kind of a sneaky soft start. They seem like they're shut down but they're still drawing power. 07:23.55 archpodnet Yes, yes. 07:32.31 Paul And so those things are extremely useful for pinpointing exactly what is drawing how much in your house. 07:37.21 archpodnet Yeah, and we've done a lot of boon docking in the last like month and a half which for those that don't know is basically you're off all services you you have no power, no water. Um, and you know your your sewer tanks your black tank and your gray tank or you know when they're full. They're full. You got to go ah you got to go empty. Um. So That's boon docking you're you're not connected to anything and we have as I've mentioned in the past we've got solar on the roof. We've got lithium down in the base for the batteries and but still you need to manage it especially overnight when you don't have that solar power coming in. So. 07:57.29 Paul Me. 08:12.17 archpodnet We have the ability to turn our inverter into basically charge only mode we do that just because if we forget to like turn it on in the morning the inverter when the sun start coming up I wanted to start bringing in solar power immediately. So don't turn it completely off but putting it in just charge only drops it down to almost no watts that the at least the power system is pulling. 08:23.81 Paul E. 08:31.82 archpodnet But when you do that all your Ac appliances turn off and we've looked at it in the evening because I'm sitting here looking at the Tv right now and it's got that like red light on it and that red light pulls a few watts right? and it's keeping just enough inside that Tv where if you turn it on it comes on relatively quickly. That's why they do that you know otherwise. 08:48.64 Paul E. 08:51.56 archpodnet It takes longer to power up the microwave I'm looking at a clock on it that's pulling a few more watts and depending on how much power you have on board how many amp hourss of of basically energy you have in your batteries. We have 300 amp hourss we rolling to 600 at the end of March so that'll help out but um. Depending on how much you have I mean that's just pulling that down slowly but surely slowly but surely and if in the morning it turns out it's a cloudy day or something like that you could be. You could be in a world of hurt for a workday if you're if you're using things like starlink all day stuff like that. But that's another thing you have to factor in too like if you don't have enough ampowers to leave your inverter on overnight then you're going to have to shut off your Ac which means you lose your internet overnight as well and then you you don't get your internet back until you turn it on in the morning. So yeah, a lot of things to consider in this lifestyle. But. 09:33.36 Paul T. 09:41.15 Paul You know, ah sorry, there's a little of sideways from what but it just you just reminded me of something with the starlink I thought I saw a ah headline the other day about a bunch of their satellites going down. Do you know anything about that and did it affect you. 09:52.60 archpodnet Oh yeah, yeah, it didn't affect me and I do know something about that. It's basically ah so the story is starlink wants to have somewhere around I think forty five Thousand satellites in the sky. And they're going to be in what they call shells. Um I think there's 4 or 5 shells. So right now they're basically in shell one and shell 2 the closer ones into the planet where they're um, they're basically putting as many satellites up as they can in different areas. They're focusing on more rural areas. So if you live in like a big city. You're simply not going to have starlink because while they want those people as customers. They know they're not giving up their their high-speed plug-in internet anytime soon right? So the more rural areas and places that doesn't that don't have like great internet are where you're more going to find satellite service from starlink so it's most of like um, lower Canada Southern Canada all of the United States except for the big cities and so places like that Mexico has it like Northern Mexico and then I think it goes all the way over into the Uk and some of the some of Europe there. They're they're filling them out more but that's that's what they have right now and there's only about three thousand satellites in the sky from the last thing I heard which is a lot. But it's not a lot when you're talking about um coverage and not only coverage but capacity which we'll get to in a minute but that being said these satellites are still relatively close together from a space standpoint from like a being in space standpoint I mean I don't think you could see one from the other but they're still like relatively close together. There was a solar flare and solar flares are relatively. They're directed. They're high energy and they have the ability and they've done this in the past there was ah a famous one I think in the late 18 hundreds that shut down like New York City and and other places or maybe it's early nineteen hundreds or something when electricity was just kind of coming into play. 11:46.47 Paul Me. 11:48.50 archpodnet Early telegraph machines everything went down because it was solar flare because they couldn't handle it. We have more robust power systems these days that can handle solar flare activity. So you don't hear about that kind of stuff happening but it is possible if 1 ne's directed enough and it and it hits the right spot that being said space is is totally subject to solar flares and they lost. 40 satellites 40 satellites were completely destroyed in 1 focused area because the solar flare like again, it comes in with a force and it destroyed 40 satellites and ah they all basically if not if they didn't do it on their own. They'll be deorbited and ah and burned up in the atmosphere. That's how the satellites die anyway. Um, they're relatively small and that's what they're designed to do so Ah. 12:28.20 Paul Wow So destroyed them and not just knocked them offline for a bit but but ruined them. 12:32.76 archpodnet Yeah, they're done. Yeah, they got to replace those satellites. So yeah, but I think they're building them in a way that that's kind of the plan right? The the plan is not to send humans up to fix these things because that's really expensive and dangerous. The plan is to just deorbit them and put up another 1 right. 12:41.31 Paul Um. Um, So yeah. 12:51.74 archpodnet Ah, so that's what I mean I think that's how they're building them. They're they're not building them for I don't want to say they're not building them to be robust. They're robust enough to be in space and and last where they're at, but it's easier just to replace it than it is to fix it. So imagine the future will have like a fleet of. Robot technicians out there maintaining the starlink satellites but and all the other satellites but you know we don't have that yet. It's easier just to let it deorbit and and put up another one so but that gets to 1 of the service issues with starlink is capacity and I got a bunch of other stuff to talk about on how to get your starlink dish. But. 13:23.30 Paul Um. 13:28.96 archpodnet You know, let's talk about that since we're since we're kind of in there. This is the big problem. We're going to have ah you can move your service address anytime you want starlink is they've received Fcc permission for mobile units like for Rvs Boats and airplanes. That will continuously stay connected on a gimbal system. They'll just always stay connected to whatever array they're looking at and then you can travel with it and have that internet the real consequence for rveers and probably boaters and stuff is you don't really need it while you're moving per se. But. You know you won't have to change your service. You're just like wherever you are you have the internet you don't you don't have to reset it back up so the ah the problem right now though is because they're still in shells one and 2 trying to fill those out across the whole planet and then they'll start working on shells 3 4 and 5. 14:07.39 Paul Nothing. 14:19.30 archpodnet Which those satellites will start building capacity. So there's only a certain number of dishes that can be connected in a fifteen kilometer wide hexa hexagon. That's the that's what the um, the service area is. It's a fifteen kilometer wide hexagon and when you move your service address into that hexagon. It's going to tell you. 1 of ah 2 things. It's either going to say um that they don't have service in that area yet. So they're just not providing starlink there or it's gonna say you have ah there's no capacity. There's no, we're at capacity in this area. We plan to add more later. That's what it's gonna say or it's just gonna bam. Move your service address to there without question and if it does that like we're leaving where we're at right now in Tucson on Thursday morning actually Thursday afternoon but we can't actually try to move our satellite our starling I don't think we're going to get. We're going up to Phoenix and I don't think there's service up there anyway. So it's not going to be an issue but. If we were going to a place where we thought we might have service the minute we move it. We lose it here. We still have the dish. It's still pointing at the sky but we moved our service address so it will no longer work. So um, so while we're in transition. We can't actually use it and if we were like moving across the country and moving every day. 15:21.17 Paul Um, isn't. 15:30.90 archpodnet Probably just wouldn't have starlink is one of our internet options. We'd have to use 1 of our cell options that we have onboard so that's one of the downsides. Um, now Rachel did mention my wife she did mention hey maybe we should just get 2 starlinks so we can move one early. To try to get into the cell where we're going because again capacity is an issue but the people are moving in and out of those um and ah and then you know we always use 1 at a time. Um the two problems with that are one. You can only have one per account right now. So we'd have to have a whole separate account to do that and 2 um, it's $100 a month so you know yeah that really does add up I mean you're definitely paying $200 a month and you're definitely only using one at a time so that's not exactly efficient if you're trying to you know, save money now we use this for business. So it's kind of a it's kind of a. 16:07.30 Paul That adds up. 16:22.89 archpodnet Business expense as far as paying for the internet goes. Ah, it's it's a writeoff so to speak and um, so so it makes sense but I couldn't I couldn't justify two hundred a month for that I'm already paying well over that for internet with all our cell networks and stuff so we're gonna we're gonna start probably getting rid of some of those. But anyway that's um, that's kind of the. Kind of the nuts and bolts on on how the service actually works I think maybe we'll take a short break right now and we'll come back and I'll just finish up a little bit before we get into our next topic on how you actually get a starlink dish and what the costs really are just in case you're you're interested in that. So let's take that break and we'll. Talk about it on the other side back in the minute.