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Gary,

Cell phone is line of sight.  The factor that can affect signal strength due
to altitude is whether or not the radiation of the cell site is
omnidirectional or focused into sectors.  Some cell sites that have antenna
towers situated against hill or mountains will use directional antennae to
focus the beam into areas where the traffic will be.  Sometimes tower
antennae will be focused in narrow beams along freeways and the sectors
perpendicular to the freeway will either be non active or omnidirectional or
focused at some other target.  There are as many variations of utilizations
as there are towers dang near.  The network decides which cell site you will
be connected to.  As each cell monitors your signal strength, they decide
who will get the handoff and when a cell will perform a handoff.
Unfortunately, that functionality is not designed for vehicles that exceed
highway speeds or have very high rate of travel like on the autobahn.

Curtis Krouse N753K

> Cell phone signal is line of sight, so would not the ability to maintain a
> signal be influenced by altitude?  Or would it still be erratic trying to
> decide which cell site to connect to?
> Gary Rodgers


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