The paper presents a model of the land mobile satellite channel, predicting the statistical fade distribution in a given urban or suburban area described by objective data. The channel modelling is based on a conditional Rician distribution, whose parameters are related to physical parameters such as building height, street width, azimuth and elevation angles of the satellite link. Relationships between Rician and physical parameters are estimated by means of a ray-tracing method based on the uniform theory of diffraction, and statistically varying physical parameters are described by analytical distributions. The model is applied to a typical suburban area, and very good agreement is found between simulations of the fade distribution and radio measurements at L, S and X bands for two elevation angles.