twangster

Paper compass delivered without asking for it. The electronic cruise compass PDF hadn't been published for today yet.

From the perspective of someone who does wifi for a living, they've made a mistake on Radiance. All the access points on the 2.4GHZ band are using channel 6 leaving channels 1 and 11 unused. That's going to create a very congested RF spectrum with a lot of interference. The 5GHz band is configured better. The 5GHz band doesn't penetrate steel walls very well at all so this may explain why the user experience is better in open public areas where guests devices are more likely to connect to the 5GHz radios.

Day Two - Sea Day Up early having crashed early, we find ourselves well into the Gulf. A lot has been said with people having issues connecting or staying connected to Voom. It's become enough of a problem that they now have a video that cycles in between the Wash Your Hands jingle and other such videos on the ship TV channel. It goes into length about how to disable these features that Apple and Google have added to their OS. The CD also mentioned it during his welcome aboard video. Starlink speeds have been a little variable this morning at an early hour when few reasonable people should be up. I'm in my cabin I had the door closed. Let's take a look at the wifi on Radiance. 20 MHz channels so we won't ever get fantastic connection rates. I am connected to the ship's access point with a 6 Mbps down and 39 Mbps "physical" connection. That's not so great. Let's try the shoe in the door trick. Cabin doors are all metal and if you wanted to block wifi signals the best way to do that would be to place a piece steel between you and the access point. A piece of steel like a cabin door. By propping the door open a little, some signal is allowed to leak into the cabin. With my door propped open I am now getting a PHY rate of 52 Mbps down and 117 Mbps up. For a 20 Mhz channel that isn't terrible in the real world. Despite this boost in wifi strength, Starlink is still be throttled by the ship. So it doesn't do a lot except make for a more stable user experience. My pictures for example are uploading a bit faster.

I was getting pretty tired and despite intention to check out the theater I went to my cabin and was just going to close my eyes for a few seconds and... Something about waking up several times with the thunderstorms last night and I was done.

After dinner I walked around attempting to walk off the Samba effect. The helipad was open and with only my phone with me and no tripod there wasn't a lot I could capture. There was a light sea mist in the air and the horizon was still of light pollution from Texas so it wasn't great conditions for astrophotography but it was a nice evening otherwise and there was a sky full of stars above the ship. At one point a guest with a strong LED flashlight appeared and started shining their light all over. This had to irritate the bridge who need to keep their night vision intact, especially in the northern Gulf with lots of small boat traffic. I'm hoping they don't close the helipad at night as a result. It's the darkest part of the ship 🙂 I'll hop to try again with my good camera and a tripod.

Samba Grill had three guests tonight, and I was one of them. Great views! Meat. And a sunset. The other couple finished 30 minutes ago. Weird having the whole restaurant to myself.

On the way to dinner Sunset soon.

Great chat with the bar staff in the Colony Club. We are in good hands.

Our progress...

I'm the guy at the bar.

The Diamond lounge overflow is the VCL like Jewel.

Pinnacle spread in the Colony Club.

Found 8 Starlink antenna, same location as Jewel. Four on VCL and four on roof of Sky Bar. It's hard to get angle on the Sky Bar antennas but there are four there.

Sail away party Joining the tankers.

Dinner in Samba tonight

Away we go!

Lines are dropping. Time to blow this popsicle stand.

Night 1 MDR menu

All provisions are on board. Time to get out of here so the full bar menu can commence!

Looks like new carpet will be going in soon.

Cinema showing Strange World and Top Gun Maverick today.

Had some in a land restaurant this week. Hope it's safe.

Full size original TV remote Easy to access TV inputs

So apparently the previous occupants of my cabin are still in the system. They've tried to include them in my dining reservations. Must be been platinum members.

Cabin pics Another reason to prefer non connecting is to get a sofa instead of a chair. Shower curtains!