APRS Air Mobile
Running APRS while flying is a fun and semi-useful project. APRS often has much better aerial coverage than cellular networks, allowing friends and family to see your location as you fly across the country. And yes ADSB does this too but practically, only if you have a 1090 (mode S) ADSB solution. The UAT solutions I have do not have much coverage on sites like flightaware due to fewer 978 ground receivers and the fact that the airborn transmitter is very low power (fractions of a watt vs hundreds of watts for a mode S transponder).
The easy way to do this is using an APRS capable handheld radio. I have been using my Yaesu VX8 for this lately and it really works well. This has the extended battery pack on it and can easily run all day. I have it set to beacon every 2 minutes.
Standalone Trackers
Another option is a standalone tracker such as this: https://www.tindie.com/products/ballooner/2m-aprs-arduino-818-12v-uno/
Above is my instance of that.
Pros:
- It's standalone, plugs into the cigarette lighter and never needs charging. Set and forget.
- Relatively inexpensive.
Cons:
- It's only 1 watt output which in sparsely populated areas doesn't always get out real well.