[pct-l] Tethers to the other world...from the other world

[Dan Jacobs]

On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 11:49 AM,  <abiegen at cox.net> wrote:
> The poor phone reception was frustrating. When I could get Piper on the phone the first few minutes were used up by, "How are you? How hot is it?' the typical phone call. When I started to talk about what I was going to do, the line would drop. Same when she called me.
>
> TrailHacker

Texting could have helped here.

SMS messages would have likely gone through with very little trouble.
If you had a good enough signal to begin a call, you had enough signal
to send an SMS or "text message". If you are interested in how it
works, than go to wikipedia. All you really need to know if you aren't
interested in how it works is that you don't need very much signal for
the message to go through. If your cell phone service doesn't include
free texting, or you already aren't paying for the feature, an
individual message may not cost much. For a small price, you could get
your point across more clearly than if you had calls that kept
dropping.

Text messages aren't foolproof, for some phones there is a bit of a
learning curve, and it is a feature that the cell network will move
through as it sees fit, but it is very useful in low signal strength
areas. I've sent text messages in places where my phone said I had no
bars on the signal meter, and the signal strength was just above the
noise, but some kind of connection to the radio tower, and the
messages made it back and forth.

Dan Jacobs
Washougal
-- 
"Loud motorcycle stereos save lives"
Motorcycle to hike, hike to motorcycle