> Not at 900MHz

Shame, but at least now I understand why, thanks :)

> you’re realistically limited to near line of sight paths

Wonder exactly how far one would be able to get up to reach 1,000km line of sight, assuming you put both points equally far up. Guessing it's the curvature of the earth that gets in the way at that distance?

Yep. There are cubesats running LoRa payloads in low earth orbit[0], and between mountaintops, terrestrial paths of hundreds of km are possible[1].

[0] https://www.hackster.io/news/fossasat-1-an-open-source-satel...

[1] https://meshtastic.org/docs/overview/range-tests/

> Using metal tape measures to build simple quarter-wave monopole antennas is a hack to that’s actually pretty common in the small satellite community

This is just too crazy, thanks a lot for sharing these links! :)