One thing I'd suggest before you make any decisions about peripheral digis and reach: do some real-life tests. In one of the areas that I regularly try to do APRS work, I can *hear* lots of signals from 60-75 miles south, but I can't *decode* any of them. That tells me that the digi down there (I'm not going to name names) is running more power than is useful, because all he's doing is tying up the channel beyond his range. (He can't hear me well enough to decode/digi, even running full power from my D710.)
A 200 foot tower will give you lots of range, both xmit and rcv. But the trick in setting up the system to work the way you want will be to figure out just how much useful range that is. You're really only going to figure that out by testing. 73 de chris K6DBG
