so i've been running APRS for a few months now, got my TM-D710G set up with a mag mount on the car and it's been working great for tracking, i can see myself on aprs.fi and everything. but i've been reading about paths and now im second guessing my setup because i have it set to WIDE1-1,WIDE2-2 which i thought was the standard but someone in my local club said thats too aggressive and i might be causing issues on the network especially in urban areas.

my commute takes me through a pretty dense metro area and then out into some rural stretches so i wasn't sure if i needed to cover both scenarios with one path setting or if theres a smarter way to do this. i dont want to be that guy hammering the digis every 30 seconds with a path that just creates redundant packets everywhere. anyone running a similar mixed urban/rural route and have advice on what path actually makes sense? also does the beacon rate matter as much as the path or is path the bigger concern

WIDE1-1,WIDE2-2 is honestly fine for rural areas but yeah in a dense metro it can get noisy. the thing people dont always explain is that WIDE1-1 is specifically meant to hit fill-in digis, stuff like home stations running igates with digi enabled, and then WIDE2-2 hops the backbone digis. in a city where you've got tons of backbone coverage already you could probably just run WIDE2-1 or even no path at all near an igate and your packets will still get to the internet just fine.

for your mixed commute situation a lot of people just leave it at WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 as a compromise. you lose a little rural coverage on the back end but you're not slamming the network in the city. beacon rate is also important though — 1 minute intervals while parked is totally unnecessary, smart beaconing if your radio supports it is way better because it ramps up when you're turning corners and slows down when you're on a straight highway. the TM-D710 does have smart beaconing in the menu if you haven't found it yet

yeah what he said about smart beaconing is the real fix tbh. i used to have mine set to a fixed interval and i was beaconing like crazy sitting in a parking lot. switched to smart beaconing and my packet rate dropped way down when stationary and coverage on the map actually got better because the digis weren't as congested with my junk. path i run WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 and its worked fine from central valley out into the sierra foothills which is a pretty similar urban to rural transition