Yes, but one can now buy an off-the-shelf 439-MHz LoRa tracker from the SOTA shop fully configured with one’s callsign.
And incidentally, although 2m has better range there’s plenty of evidence both theoretically and anecdotal to show that UHF is a better choice in built-up areas like towns and cities, or for densely wooded or hilly area. On recent tests I’ve been amazed how my 70cm 100mW LoRa tracker managed to penetrate dense wet woods to iGates and digipeaters some 30-40 miles away.
And personally, for tracking I prefer my APRS tracker to be a different device from my VHF/UHF FM HT.
No matter how convenient some HTs make APRS interactions - and here I want to emphasise my earlier point - it’s not much use without having an adequate network of iGates and digipeaters in the target area.
To that end, it would be great to see other groups being formed in SOTA-summit-rich regions like the G/LD-focussed Cumbria LoRa group [CumbriaLoRa@groups.io | Home] that I belately joined to coordinate the deployment of iGates and digipeaters to serve SOTA activators and others in that region.
After my initial experiments 10+ years ago I concluded much the same, that it was a technology looking for a solution. Very recently though, I have been persuaded that - if coverage is pretty good in the target area - it’s useful for chasers awaiting an activator going on-air. I myself chasing from home recently realized I could go away and do something else for a while when I could see from the activator’s aprs.fi trail that he was running very late.