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Wow, that`s a great explanation, Wayne. Now, how do you explain that sometimes, on my boat, only two miles from the shore, I cannot reach any tower with my cellphone, while a passenger in a plane flying 30000 feet over me would be able to place a call and reach many towers ? The cell phone is limited by its emitting power to reach the tower if it is too far, in both cases. I`d like to see some serious references backing up your explanation.
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For all your leftist beliefs, certain aspects of PURE science are immutable (despite the perversion of "Social Sciences."
It's called "Line-of-sight," and based on simple geometry.
Mobile phones operate in the UHF frequency range. As such, UHF radio waves are "line of sight" and do not bounce off the upper atmosphere, they cannot reflect over the horizon like shortwave or AM radio.
As such, you can only expect a connection within the "line of sight" of the cell tower. Anything in the way (buildings, or terrain features) will block reception, also.
Consider the attached diagram. Standing on the earth (small red line) you can only transmit to the visible horizon which can be thought of as a circle drawn on the sphere of the earth at a point tangent to the line beween the position of the transmitter and the surface of the earth. The higher up you go, the larger that circle becomes-- you have "line of sight" to many more towers because you aren't blocked by the curvature of the earth.
Consider also that the max radiated power from most digital cellphones is only like .8 watts or less. Propogation conditions in the atmosphere vary widely but you aren't shooting that far with low power-- becomes hard to distinguish the signal from the noise.
