>> Even if you are an apartment dweller, you can find repeaters with less than a watt of transmitting power <<
Agreed. Been there, done that. And I’ve also hosted my former club’s repeater at my home QTH.
But if your only ham activity is working local repeaters via a handy-talky, then probably you’ll soon get bored and become inactive.
My point is that hamming is fun and challenging mainly when you can work a station (preferably non-local) that’s new and unexpected, and/or when you can get on the air with a novel (preferably homebrewed) piece of equipment.
On the other hand, if it’s just the same-old same-old day-after-day, via your neighborhood repeater, I think you’ll likely lose most of your enthusiasm after a relatively short time.
I’m working with a Scout troop to incorporate HAMs into 50 milers, service projects involving nets for MS walks, etc.
The homebrew stuff is definitely where we are going.
We are also working on a version of capture the flag using a fox hunt sort of thing.