DEFINITELY recruit and don't wait until you've got armor! As Mindie pointed out, a bulk of the population of the Garrison/Base are in and around Portland, so that's naturally where most of the events occur. That's a combination of not only people being available (and willing) to roster up, but also because of the frequency of events, there's more local visibility, and we get more requests.
When you start out in a new area, it will be a little bit tougher. You might need to seek out and create events to get the ball rolling. In fact that's how events started in Portland - it was four people, making things up and asking people "can we come to your event?" vs now where people ask us more often. They got out there, got visibility, recruited, and eventually became a squad then a garrison.
Back then, the main bulk of the membership was in Seattle - most interaction with Titan involved Portland people driving up there. So there were a lot of small events here with small rosters - don't fall under the illusion that you need numbers or specific characters to make an event worthwhile - a couple of Stormtroopers can have a HUGE impact, especially in an area that doesn't see them every weekend.
Hopefully there will be occasions where folks from further north can support the events, but it's not a guarantee and it can't be forced. And it's not because they don't care or want you to fail, but we struggle sometimes to get people out to events here - getting them to drive 4 hours or more isn't always going to be easy. We can't make people troop (more than once a year anyway) and we can't make them troop events we want them to troop. Make it awesome, make them WANT to come down for those events (for example: Klamath Falls Scarecrow Row Harvest Festival)
ANYWAY (sorry this is so long) there are a lot of people ready and willing to give advice on setting up events, how to make contact with charities, etc. And if you're near Grants Pass, you've got a long-time trooper in Dave to help out, and I know he's ready to recruit and grow things down there. I know there are a few scattered folks way down south, hopefully they'll see this post and make contact and you all can start talking about some new events to create.
