A method for allowing a mobile station to find a code transmitted by a base station which has a propagation delay to the mobile station which is much larger or smaller than a propagation delay between the mobile station and a base station from which it derived a time reference is provided. In the context of IS-95, a PN offset is sent to the mobile station to identify which target base station pilot signals to search for. By sending a virtual PN offset which differs from the real PN offset, the mobile station can find the target base station signals where normally they would fall outside the mobile station's search window.