Methods and apparatus disclosed herein enable a half-duplex, HD, wireless communication device, WCD (16), to remain synchronized to a supporting communication network (10), during uplink transmissions that use a large repetition factor, also referred to a using a large bundle size. For example, the WCD (16) uses a rule whereby the WCD (16) tunes back to the downlink carrier from time to time while making an uplink transmission that uses a large repetition factor. Re-tuning to the downlink carrier from time to time in this manner allows the WCD (16) to correct and maintain its time and frequency synchronization with respect to the network (10).