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At some point in the near future there may open source antenna designs that could run SpaceX's closed source software on commodity equipment with service paid f

• ducktective 6y ago
  yeah, good luck with hiding the actual physical electromagnetic waves...heard those could be easily tracked.
  • drdaeman 6y ago
    TIL that Starlink uses phased arrays in their terminals, but I wonder if - for discretion's sake - it can be also made to work with parabolic dish antennas. Or do those phased arrays those days have small sidelobes? Either way, still should be possible to catch those in denser areas by wardriving, I think.
    • TaylorAlexander 6y ago
      The satellites are continuously moving so they use the phased array to track the motion of the satellites in real time (I believe). You could make a dish on a movable mount, but from an RF perspective that would be no less detectable than a dish. The point is that Starlink is a two way link, so someone flying overhead in an airplane could detect the transmitted signal. TV dishes are harder to detect because they don’t transmit when receiving TV, not because they are a dish.
      • drdaeman 6y ago
        Yeah, I get it's bidirectional and was thinking about a movable mount exactly. Flying over felt costly which is why I thought about wardriving and relying on transmitter antenna sidelobes for detection - as I believe they're smaller for parabolic antennas. From what I've heard, this is the most common approach - just a van roaming the city and comparing what they see to list of licensed radios. Although, now, thinking about the costs I feel that maybe I was wrong in that assumption, and flying drones is cheap enough for this purpose.
        • TaylorAlexander 6y ago
          Ah yes that makes sense. I am not familiar with the differences in emission patterns.