Talking with a ham friend, he was telling me about APRS. The only radio I have that can currently do that by itself, is the Yaesu FTM-500 which is in my truck. "I'm not going to fiddle with that while driving" I told him.
So that got me thinking. I have a DigiRig, cables for multiple radios, etc, why not try this app for my phone. So I spent the $10 or whatever it was on the app. I'm not sure if there is one for iPhone...
Straightforward setup. The only thing I had to mess with was the TX delay because I had to use vox. Default was ~200ms, I settled ~800ms.
So, for $10, I have a way to send text messages to family when power goes out here (which happens all the time).
I'll make a separate post in the radio forum to discuss APRS.