Yes! to the idea of starting a digital net.
A friend got me into PSK31 about 6 months ago and it's good stuff, whether on HF or even on VHF.
I have had some luck with voice on HF, "sort of" was able to talk with Alan Georges once on 40m with an NVIS setup. (RST wasn't 599 it was more like 111, not really useable. We're about 700 miles apart)
With digital modes though, wow works really well, lots of signal with low power. When the band's open, I've been able to QSO over 5800 miles on only 15 watts.
Would really like to see if I can connect to any TSPers with digital. So far almost all of my QSOs on digital are just exchanging information on our stations. Discussing stuff like we do here would be great.
PSK31 works well on VHF, too, especially if your radio will transmit SSB in the VHF or UHF bands. I have a friend 18 miles away and we can talk to each other VHF simplex, *if* we both use 50 watts and use an omnidirectional antenna on top of a 25' rooftop.
But, if we change it over to USB or LSB on VHF and use PSK31, RTTY, or something similar, we can 'talk' 599 signal strength on only 2-5 watts.