[geerlingguy]

It's a lot about height + antenna selection. I've had better luck with Rak stuff than the more popular and super cheap Heltec V3 (but the V3 is a great little gateway into Meshtastic, and isn't too bad in certain areas).

I feel like Meshtastic is a lot like what ham radio felt like 50ish years ago. People experimenting with antennas and radios... dealing with the FCC and band allocations...

I do find there's proportionately more "prepper" types on the mesh, at least here in the Midwest, than I encounter online. Makes sense, though, considering how a lot of it is described.

[hackcasual]

I've got a mix of LilyGo and Rak devices, and a sew Station G1's. LilyGo gets criticized, but after I switched to Rak antennas on them they work great.

The meshtastic discord definitely leans pepper as well. I live in a coastal urban area and the nodes here seem to be more general hobbyist.

I'm hoping to have some sort of automated BBS type node to play around with

[hackcasual]

Antenna selection is less important with LoRa than other mesh networks, which is nice meaning you can have a meshtastic watch for example.

The link budget is massive (150 dB) meaning getting a really nice antenna is less impactful than bumping your speed down a notch

Edit: LilyGo devices for 900MHz are notoriously terrible, and getting a $3 one will see a definite improvement