Satellite systems are being planned for two-way communication with mobile vehicles using UHF and L-band frequencies. Of special concern in the system design are the characteristics of propagation in suburban and rural areas where fading occurs due to multipath effects and vegetative shadowing. A review of the literature was performed to study these propagation impairments. Available experimental data are examined, compared, and summarized. Propagation through vegetation is studied in order to compare reported modeling efforts and to determine the parameter dependences of path loss. A simple deterministic path model is then presented to estimate vegetative path loss. An overall statistical model is also proposed to describe the signal level fading statistics. The statistical model is compared to data, and the deterministic path model is used to determine the mean of signal level distribution functions in the presence of shadowing.