I don't think you need constrain yourself to a regional area to accomplish what you want to do but I suggest that if you are not well versed in C development and knowledgable to use data collection and debug techniques, you will have a hard time moving forward. I am not saying "don't try it" but you should be aware of the requisites.
Alan, why do you say this? No knowledge of C is required to hack on chirp, and I can't really think of anything about said skills that would help specifically.
Rob, a lot of Icom radios are very similar and they use a standardized protocol, so it's highly likely that copy-and-modify of another driver would get you some of the way there. Especially if you're just looking to suss out the memory map details so someone else can work on the meat of it, Icom radios are nearly trivial to get a clean memory dump out of.
For anything else, I think you'll just have to stick to asking questions here. Most of us have never met each other and just have to ask dumb questions in public to make progress. Give it a shot -- worst case is nobody replies :)
--Dan