I bought one of these, wired it up to an Arduino, wrote some code, but then got busy and sidetracked, and so haven’t got back to finish it yet.
It’s only 1.7W tx power, but has CTCSS and offset frequency. With a decent VHF antenna (say, a J-pole at 40 ft) you could probably work the local repeater, and maybe APRS/packet, plus RTTY, SSTV, PSK31.