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Agreed! That said, I live rural and am a hop from primitive back country; have years of backpacking under my skirt. <lol> Decades ago, long before tech, I maste

Agreed! That said, I live rural and am a hop from primitive back country; have years of backpacking under my skirt. <lol> Decades ago, long before tech, I mastered a compass and topographic map -- and what you need with you when leaving for heaven-in-the-woods. I've never been lost. That's a skill, imho, that anyone going into back country needs to have. As I write this, I am remembering a friend who went solo elk hunting south of me, which a new emergency system. Around his evening fire, he leaned back on his pack, set it off, and the next thing he knew, he had helicopters hovering above, EMT-types hiking into his primitive site, and one very mad wife, who had raced out of her job to find him. Scared all the elk away... Recently, the strangest thing that happened to me was having a signal on a total wi-fi phone in a remote area while friend's verizon phone plan had no signal. This was an area where there were no houses ...just miles of land.

art0rz 10y ago
I've had WiFi signals in the middle of fields in Belgium and France while hiking, nothing around for miles except for a tree here and there, I check my phone and suddenly there's WiFi. I've seen two open hotspots with paywalls, too. I figured the closed ones must have been for some farm equipment or something, but couldn't find anything.
- Daniel_sk 10y ago
  Was it an Android phone? If yes, than that's one of the less known but not so rare bugs. Sometimes the WiFi network will be stuck in the "in range" state even though you are already too far away. It happened to me a few times (I could see my home network even though I was in a different country :-)). Trying to connect will fail. Switching Airplane mode on/off will fix it.
  - art0rz 10y ago
    On one occasion I checked if the network was still there when I walked back and it was.
girvo 10y ago
Out in central Queensland, there's a number of places you can get full 4G coverage when you'd really not expect to be able to. It's quite interesting to have zero FM radio stations, but a couple Mb/s worth of data transfer available to you!
- KnightHawk3 10y ago
  Meanwhile my house a few km out of brisbane is lucky to get one bar :(

art0rz 10y ago

I've had WiFi signals in the middle of fields in Belgium and France while hiking, nothing around for miles except for a tree here and there, I check my phone and suddenly there's WiFi. I've seen two open hotspots with paywalls, too. I figured the closed ones must have been for some farm equipment or something, but couldn't find anything.

Daniel_sk 10y ago
Was it an Android phone? If yes, than that's one of the less known but not so rare bugs. Sometimes the WiFi network will be stuck in the "in range" state even though you are already too far away. It happened to me a few times (I could see my home network even though I was in a different country :-)). Trying to connect will fail. Switching Airplane mode on/off will fix it.
- art0rz 10y ago
  On one occasion I checked if the network was still there when I walked back and it was.

girvo 10y ago

Out in central Queensland, there's a number of places you can get full 4G coverage when you'd really not expect to be able to. It's quite interesting to have zero FM radio stations, but a couple Mb/s worth of data transfer available to you!

KnightHawk3 10y ago
Meanwhile my house a few km out of brisbane is lucky to get one bar :(