There was a period of maybe the 1980s-2000 where radio was dying (it was all old people who were defending their turf), but in the past 13 years it seems to have really turned around -- more activity on the 2m/440 HT scene, disaster stuff, etc. You can do crazy things like run 1500W wifi. Operate RC. Work space stations (satellites, the ISS, etc.) Weird propagation stuff (sunspot related, meteors, the moon...).
The only lingering problem I have with amateur radio is the ban on crypto, but you can get around that by developing encrypted protocols but publishing the keys in routine use, or moving the equipment to non-ham bands with secret keys later.
VHF (2m) is going to be vastly more useful for emergency communications than HF in most urban areas, and for people who live in apartment buildings, etc., VHF is going to be a lot easier to actually use. I'm using a Yaesu 8800 mobile in my car now so I can cross-band repeat UHF to VHF as well, which would probably work pretty well for disaster communications.
(I'm personally most interested in UHF/EHF, myself, mainly satellite and point to point. I ran an iDirect TCP/IP Ku-band commercial/government/military network for a few years, and would love to buy some space segment on Ka band or possibly X and get back into it at some point. But I don't have a home/office with space for a dish farm right now, nor the $1-5k/MHz to lease transponders.)
If I had the ability to put up a tower or even a patio for antennas, I'd probably get a home HF station, true.
google for "hf mobile" or just ask at a nearby club meeting, there's enough people doing HF mobile that surely someone will give you a demonstration.
I have a "trailer hitch mount". So I can install or remove whatever I want, relatively easily and quickly. Its a slight step up from the magnet mount technique. Using the quick disconnect on the antenna I can stick a 5/8th wave 2M vertical on if I want, or a shortened 20M hamstick-alike, or whatever I want.
My favorite part is my neighborhood has enough RF smog to make HF operation basically impossible (even weak signal 6M sometimes), but a RF silent park parking lot is only a short drive away. This tends to make up for the inherent disadvantages of a small mobile HF installation.
You don't need to start with a $500 all weather autotuner or $700 screwdriver antenna and elaborate mounting plans... a simple $20 stick-type on a temporary magnet is good enough to see what its like, or basically "free" if a local will loan you some gear to see what its like (weaksignal VHF+ rovers are like that, but some HFers are like that too).
Also its a lot harder and more expensive to build an installation that will survive snow and thunderstorms at 85 MPH down the interstate and survive for years outside 24x365 than to park somewhere and slap a magnet mount on the roof and run the cable thru an open window... you'd never drive around like that, but you don't have to, so .. don't. It also cures the ignition noise puzzle... shutting off the engine in a parking lot tends to eliminate ignition noise pretty effectively LOL. Only operating while parked tends to eliminate the "distracted driving" problem too.
Like all things in ham radio, if motivated and knowledgeable you can do quite a bit quickly for free, or you can spend years and thousands if you want. Both are fun.
I found this all very entertaining when I was living in the apartment building.
The other advice I have is keep everything in a big plastic bin, so you don't forget the radio 12 volt power cable at home, or forget your logbook, or whatever else you need. And when you come home, throw the full bin in a corner of the apartment until next time.
Learning process and test, if you're smart, can be done in 4h total for Technician. There are lots of programs to do it in 8h, but IMO a tech person should be able to do it in less time. I used http://www.baears.com/ to do tech (and then studied for General during the rest breaks and got General at the same time!); it's a good choice in the Bay Area.
I should be an Extra and a Volunteer Examiner myself in a month or so, so along with 2 friends with Extra/VE could run classes. I'm planning to do crypto meetups/keysignings/etc on the Peninsula on the first friday of the month anyway (5-10pm somewhere in MV or PA, probably near Google, nominally a 2600 meeting), so doing ham exams during that would be fine, if people studied before that.
Its "amateur" radio, not to be stolen and taken over by encrypted taxi dispatchers or pay per view encrypted TV broadcasters. The FCC likes to separate human activities by frequency band, and gets all out of whack when people try to sneak around their intentions. In no small part because of licensing procedures and fees which are darn near zilch for ham radio and quite expensive process for some LMR and broadcasting operations.
Its also kind of vital for international communication into repressive regimes (worse than the USA in 2010s anyway). Think of a kid in Wisconsin talking to a dude in Russia during the peak of the cold war, that kind of thing. Now "everybody knows" that you can trivially embed a one time pad, but at least we're not sending character groups containing who knows what to each other. So pretty much everywhere except utterly failed states, you can get an amateur radio license and just kind of hang out on the air. Its the original techie social network, from decades before the internet.
Finally at least in theory its supposed to be one big party line for general purposes and emergency communications. So partitioning the service into little encrypted groups who intentionally would not be able to talk with each other, serves exactly what purpose given the intentional regulatory design to encourage the exact opposite goal? It would be like allowing encrypted messages on Hacker News comments, which would serve exactly what purpose, if any?
There was a period of maybe the 1980s-2000 where radio was dying (it was all old people who were defending their turf), but in the past 13 years it seems to have really turned around -- more activity on the 2m/440 HT scene, disaster stuff, etc. You can do crazy things like run 1500W wifi. Operate RC. Work space stations (satellites, the ISS, etc.) Weird propagation stuff (sunspot related, meteors, the moon...).
The only lingering problem I have with amateur radio is the ban on crypto, but you can get around that by developing encrypted protocols but publishing the keys in routine use, or moving the equipment to non-ham bands with secret keys later.