Communications Equipment / Radios

Then you should do some research on APRS and its limitations and decide if it will do what you want. As a local network it's not bad, especially when the radios are talking to each other direct. But when out of direct range, requires a Packet Digipeater. This can be a dedicated base station, or another stations mobile TNC operating as a Digipeater as well as their own APRS mode. That means you need enough APRS operators to make it successful in the first place. How many APRS nodes are networked on the web these days I don't know, but I ran, and still to run a Digipeater (only) station here because of my elevation. It's been running since the early 90's and if I were to pull it off air would likely cause a problem with the guys running APRS in the local area.

APRS is one of those things that the more participants there are, the better it works.