I’ve played around with these a bit, Like you mentioned, the network needs to be robust. Ideally all participants should have a rooftop repeater at their house and potentially their place of business. Like all UHF, power is nice and elevation is king. Most of the lora hardware out there only does a wimpy 128mW. I believe the t-deck and solar kit are in that underpowered majority. IIRC, the legal limit on 915mhz ISM is 1W. RAK Wireless makes some affordable 1 watt equipment I’ve been looking at for a while. https://meshtastic.org/docs/hardware/devices/rak-wireless/wismesh/1w-booster/
One lora related plan I’ve had in my head is to take two meshtastic devices, strap one to a drone and fly it up to the legal limit, which is 400 feet above ground for amateur use, 400 feet away from a building / structure with a part 107 license. Then see how far away I could reach a friend. I’m betting there would be quite an improvement over ground to ground simplex. For a sudden emergency event, being able to pop up a drone and reach an unlicensed loved one 15 to 30 miles away would be fantastic.
I did a line of sight test with a friend. He stood at the south end of 28th st sw in paris, I walked up the road sending him messages. I believe the messages stopped between Graham and Shiloh, which would be half a mile to three quarters of a mile, ground level simplex wise, worse than a bubble pack walkie talkie. But, as you know, simplex isn’t the point. The real point is to have a robust network of rooftop digipeaters powered independently of the grid and allow those stubborn, unlicensed but preparedness minded folks to participate legally.