I recently found out about this forum. What I have seen so far matches exactly the direction we are going in. My locale is Clatsop County, Oregon, located on the NW Oregon Coast, at the mouth of the Columbia River. The club sponsor is the Sunset Empire Amateur Radio Club see https://www.sunset-empire-arc.org/.
Our concept is to connect our repeater sites via Ubiquity Nano-Links to permit remote weather monitoring, seismic monitoring, and digital control links. A few months ago we did a test run from a local school to a mountain top, the demonstration project worked as planned with stunning video streams of the Columbia River.Part of this project is a complete repeater change out with "hardening" against seismic and extreme weather conditions. I am going to watch the forum to get new ideas and see how things flow.
JIm Santee
KF7NE
Welcome to the network Jim.
If you get a chance to flash the firmware and try it out that will be a good way to get some hands on experience and that is some of the best skill to have. Beyond that yes keep an eye on the forums and soak up the knowledge floating around.
I can understand the Seismic side of the equation, being from SOCAL it's the biggest concern I have about network survival in a disaster (hope the tower doesn't tip over )
Welcome Jim!