This idea of using FM and UHF radio as a dependable emergency communication system lead me to the idea for my current project im working on which is a redundent

This idea of using FM and UHF radio as a dependable emergency communication system lead me to the idea for my current project im working on which is a redundent mesh network built using radio networks. At least that's where I started. The project is a combination of standard "new" IoT technologies like GSM and Wi-Fi with my own mesh radio system. Only some nodes are GSM enabled all of the nodes use traditional UHF communications. At first I wanted to use different FM radio frequencies with frequency reuse patterns to implement a simple mesh network routing protocol as a proof of concept. But I was still a beginner in RF and I soon relaized that the FM, marine, and air bands have a bunch of FCC regulations making it illegal to transmit data at my goal of at least 500 m (0.5 km) let alone finding a cheap/simple implementation circut or chip for someone new to RF design like I was. This lead to the idea of just using 433 MHz transivers to accomplish the same goal. And lucky, there are tons of simple tranciver boards by various manufacturers with simple interfaces and long ranges even with non ideal antennas. I've gotten a point where I have these small solar powered packages you can just mount anywhere and can last up to 12/14 days on 4 hours of full sunlight charge. I've also reached the stage where I can top worrying about hardware implementations and work more on software such as a nice dashboard, a more thought out routing algorithm (instead of just simple backtracking), and more ideas such as being able to send data back into the network to take certain actions in the physical world such as localized warnings. A more powerful use case I witnessed firsthand would be to use a robust system like this to control water systems such as wastewater and freshwater systems for municipalites in sever weather incidents such as hurricanes. Pump stations can be equipped with backup power but data from these stations and various sensors in the system are interrupted durring sever stroms like hurricane when these systems are most critical and need sensor data to make sure the system keeps running. I see the older technologies as solid foundation for robust networks. Most of these old systems are behind in terms of implementation technology but the foundations of these technologies are very strong. I believe that by integrating the robustness of older technologies with newer systems you can get the befits of new systems and technology but keep the robustness and stability of older systems.