It's like trying to get friends to use signal. I've moved to Meshcore recently and it gets me connected to the rest of the UK. But it took me 2 dedicated repeaters.
I love the meshcore homesassitant plugin, managed to setup some alerts to send out a message on a private channel every 5 minutes if I lose power as an example.
I just picked up a T1000-E to take on holiday next week, interested if I see anything in the air of in Europe.
These local meshes remind me of BBS days. You have to know a few things to access it and the community is all the better for it.