4G for most days. Satellite for the glens.

A SIM-slot router covers most of the map; Starlink Mini covers the rest, including the trick that runs it off a 65W power bank.

The TP-Link router takes any data SIM and shares it with everything in the van: far better antennas than a phone hotspot, and it doesn't flatten your handset. When even that finds nothing, the Starlink Mini comes out. The unglamorous hero is the 10-metre USB-C cable with a PD trigger chip in it: it runs the dish from an ordinary 65W+ power bank, which means internet on a picnic table with no inverter and no engine running.

Field note

Half the point of scoring signal at every stop is knowing in advance which favourite parkups need the dish and which just need patience. On the nights neither layer works, logging where there are no bars carries on regardless.