March 23, 2025

This Week in Amateur Radio

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Starlink

Starlink Dishes Will Shut Down if They Reach 122° Fahrenheit

Elon Musk has been aiming for internet speeds of 1Gbps but before he achieves this lofty goal he might want to take a look at how well his satellite dishes work. A new report by Ars Technica, is revealing that dishes perform thermal shutdowns when they reach 122° Fahrenheit (50° Celsius).

A user called Martin discovered this the hard way when his internet stopped working and he received the following error messages which he shared online on a Reddit post: “Offline: Thermal shutdown.” The dish “overheated” and “Starlink will reconnect after cooling down.”

He reached out to Starlink support which said that “Dishy will go into thermal shutdown at 122°F and will restart when it reaches 104° F (50° and 40° Celsius respectively)” He even tried to water down the dish to cool it down which worked but only temporarily.

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