Starlink Rental for the Sturgis Rally
A town of seven thousand takes on half a million. Something has to give.
For one week each August the Black Hills absorb a crowd two orders of magnitude larger than the resident population, and the terrestrial network is comprehensively overwhelmed. Vendors, campground operators, and anyone processing payments feel it first.
Because the dish talks to satellites rather than the local towers, its capacity is unaffected by how many people just rode into town.
Sky and obstruction
What the dish will actually see here
Depends where you camp. The open prairie campgrounds east of the hills are effortless. The wooded private campgrounds tucked into ponderosa gulches around Sturgis and Deadwood are the harder case, pine on both valley walls takes real sky. If you are running a vendor operation, put the dish on the tripod above the tents and canopies rather than at ground level between them.
Once you are set up, the captive portal on your router draws the real obstruction map from your own dish, so you can see exactly which part of the sky is blocked and move before it costs you a call.
How you get it
Shipped to you. The Starlink Mini kit ships anywhere in the country ahead of your dates. The portable power station and solar panel are local-delivery items in Colorado and cannot be shipped, so plan your own power for this trip.
Frequently asked questions
- Can I run vendor payments on it during rally week?
- That is one of the most valuable uses. Card processing that fails because the local network is saturated is exactly the problem this solves.
We rent satellite internet equipment. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by this event or its organizers.