A mobile station (102) transmits a plurality of channels including a pilot channel and at least one information channel. In the exemplary embodiment, the base station (106) determines the adequacy of the transmission energy of the reverse link signal in accordance with the received energy of the reverse link pilot signal. In the present invention, the pilot channel transmission power is retained at the level it was prior to the frequency search excursion, while increasing the transmission energy of at least one other channel transmitted by the mobile station. In addition, when the mobile station (102) is not capable of increasing the transmission energy of all of the information channels, the mobile station (102) generates a ranking of the importance of the different information channels and selectively increases the transmission power of those channels.