Starlink obstructions explained: how much sky you actually need
Starlink does not need a clear line to one point in the sky - it needs a clear cone, because it is tracking satellites that move. That difference is why the gum tree you barely notice causes the dropout at 8pm every night.
By the Topline Antennas crew · Published 24 August 2026 · Brisbane, QLD
The moving-target problem
Why a small obstruction causes big dropouts
A satellite dish for TV points at one satellite that never moves, so one gap between branches is enough. Starlink is the opposite: the dish is continuously handed from satellite to satellite, each crossing the sky in minutes. In Australia the dish leans toward the northern sky and needs a wide, clean cone of it. Anything solid inside that cone - a gum canopy, the neighbour’s gable, your own second storey - blocks the connection for the seconds a satellite passes behind it.
Those seconds matter unevenly. Streaming buffers straight through them; video calls and gaming do not. That is why an "obstructed" install can feel fine for Netflix and unusable for the 9am stand-up - and why the fix is worth doing properly if you work from home. In Brisbane the usual offenders are tall eucalypts on leafy blocks, the D’Aguilar-range tree cover on acreage in the north-west, and low first-storey mounts looking across a two-storey neighbourhood.
One more Brisbane reality: trees grow. A scan that passes in August against bare branches can fail in summer. A borderline result today is a failed result next year - plan for the canopy, not the twigs.
Free, before any hardware moves
Reading the Starlink app’s obstruction scan
The Starlink app’s obstruction tool uses your phone camera to trace the sky from a candidate location and paints the blocked portions red. Run it from where the dish would actually sit - at roof height if you can safely, not from the lawn two metres below, because the roofline that blocks the lawn view often clears entirely at ridge height. Once a dish is running, the app also logs real obstruction events over time, which is the honest measure: a scan is a forecast, the outage log is the verdict.
What the percentages mean in practice: a fully clear scan is the goal for work-from-home use; a sliver of obstruction low on the horizon is usually liveable; red patches high in the northern cone mean recurring dropouts that no amount of restarting will fix. We run this scan - at height - as the first step of every Starlink install, and the quote is fixed only after it, because the scan decides the mount.
Spend the minimum that clears the cone
The fixes, in cost order
| Fix | When it works | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Relocate on the same roof | The obstruction is local - one tree, one gable - and another corner of the roof clears it | Longer cable run; needs the scan re-run at the new spot, not guessed |
| Mount higher on the house | Ridge, gable-end or chimney mounts that lift the dish above the local roofline | Mount choice matters on tile - see the roof mount guide |
| A dedicated pole | Tree cover sits between house and sky - common on acreage; the pole steps away from the canopy instead of over it | The most expensive option: footing, pole, trenched cable - but on treed blocks it is often the only one that actually clears |
| Trimming the tree | One offending branch on your own land | Grows back; check council rules on protected species before quoting a chainsaw |
The wrong fix is buying height for its own sake: a taller mount that still looks into the same canopy moves the problem, not the dish’s view. Cone first, then hardware.
Get the scan done at roof height Obstruction scan first, fixed quote after - and the mount that actually clears your sky → or call 0467 098 943.