Hi Z,
My first board works just fine as a spec analyser.
I've yet to build my other boards.
I'm a bit like you, no big motivation for UHF at the moment (I have OpenLRS for UHF R/C), plus I have a couple other projects - including weather monitoring, maybe with an RFM22B and an Arduino 
With the British weather, you should get on it !
Nigel.