so ive been messing with APRS for a few months now and the tracking side works fine, i can see my position on aprs.fi no problem, digipeater is picking me up and everything looks good on that end. but when someone tries to send me a message through the network i never actually receive it on my radio. like the message shows up on aprs.fi as delivered but my HT just never beeps or shows anything.

im running a TM-D72A so its got the built in TNC, not using any external stuff. path is set to WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 which i know is probably more than i need in a city but i figured it wouldnt hurt. the igate nearby is showing my packets so i know its hearing me. just cant figure out why inbound messages arent making it to the radio.

anyone dealt with this? feels like the igate isnt injecting the return path or something but im not sure how to confirm that. the D72 manual is not exactly helpful on this stuff.

the aprs.fi showing delivered doesnt actually mean delivered to your radio, it just means an igate saw the message and passed it along into the network. thats a common confusion. the real question is whether there's an RF-capable igate near you that will re-transmit the inbound message over the air so your HT can hear it. a lot of igates are receive-only, meaning they only push packets from RF to internet, not the other way. you'd want a two-way igate in range. you can check on aprs.fi by clicking on the igates near you and seeing if they're listed as bidirectional or just rx-only.

also double check your SSID on the radio matches what youre sending messages to. ive seen people message -9 when the radio is set to -7 and wonder why nothing happens

yeah what the other guy said about rx-only igates is the big one, thats almost certainly your problem. i ran into the exact same thing a while back. most igates people set up at home dont bother enabling the TX side because it requires more care about not flooding the channel. you basically need someone who specifically configured theirs for two-way operation.

the D72A itself is solid for this stuff once you get the path and settings dialed in, i ran one for years. one thing id also check is your unproto path — some weird behavior can happen if the radio is set to send acks back on a slightly wrong path but honestly the igate thing is almost definitely your issue first.