Everything is so VHS-centric around here in terms of Gwinnett, Stone Mountain, and Jasper, I took the plunge on the dual band so I could carry one radio at a time.
Lilburner,
Do you know how it was used in Irma and will it work for us? Is it worth investing in? Also, how does Zillo work and what range will it cover with and w/o cell towers?
My experience wasn't firsthand as I was running Skywarn nets on VHS and UHF, but the story goes that HF was unusable, so D-Star wound up filling in for HF.
Zello is an app - 100% internet. It was a big hit in the hurricanes as long as there was service available.
The advantage of D-Star and presumably other digital models over conventional internet communications is that it doesn't have to inject at your immediate location and there are options. If you had a situation in Lawrenceville in which grid/internet was down, you could talk through Stone Mountain.