I bought a pair of Lilygo T-Echo radios with meshtastic firmware two years ago for my birthday, but I had limited success connecting to anyone.
Suddenly, a couple of weeks ago I started seeing radio traffic from Carolina to Caguas. It looks like someone close to my house set up a repeater, and traffic was reaching me. If I take a radio to the third floor of my office building, I can send a message home (just over 5 km or 3 mi) with high probability.
Reception at my house has always been a problem, before cable TV, we had a TV antenna on a giant pole so we could pick up broadcast TV. The meshtastic LoRa coverage is wierd, because I can only see traffic basically in a narrow strip running from Caguas to Carolina, but I've spoken to people on airplanes.
Meshtastic (and LoRa) send text messages over LoRa, I've paired a phone or tether a computer to the T-Echo units to use with the meshtastic app on Android or linux.