N2310D wrote:
Shades of the old McGiver television series (or the current commercial
with the tube sock).
The dense foliage may well be a concern in the frequency spectrum of the
Sat-Phones. I have a chitalpa tree that occasional stretches out a branch of
leaves that occludes the downlink to my Direct-TV antenna. When the wind
blows the signal drops in and out reminding me to go whack off the branch.

On X-Files Mulder was able to call Skully from the middle of the
desert, in a train car, burried in the desert. Cell phones must be
pretty good!

-Robert