Hi Dave

My first though (if your license covers it) would be to use HF to send a
slow data rate stream back to your home QTH. Use PSK31 or Q15X25 maybe?
40M is probably good for 500 miles or so.

You may even get away with one of the meteor scatter modes on VHF (eg
FSK441) depending on how much data you want to send.

There would be a few problems to solve of course!

My 2c worth

Cheers Bob VK2YQA

David Auletta wrote:
It's a personal recreation adventure! I don't think it will be safe or
easy but definitely fun. I'm not even sure exactly what I need yet,
I'm sure we'll find out at the borders. I'll be going with 4 other
people and we are taking a dually double cab pickup with a camper,
diesel and 4x4.
Ideally I'd like to take a vhf "tracker" with built in APRS, and be
able to have that data read and uploaded to websites along the
way..I'm thinking that is probably easy to do in the states but I
don't know about where we are going - there might not be too many hams
around. That's why I was curious about satellites. The other option
might be HF or cellular phone APRS but I'm concerned about cost and
complexity - I don't know what equipment I need or how to do it. I
have some old VHF radio shack HTs and a Garmin II+ GPS. I'm thinking
about bringing a GSM cel phone like T-mobile (USA) or TIM (from
Brazil) mainly for emergencies and SMS messaging.
Dave