so i've been running a TM-D710G as a fill-in digi for about 8 months now and it's been working fine but lately i noticed my packets aren't showing up on aprs.fi anymore. the radio is still digipeating locally — i can see other stations hitting off me and their icons pop up on the map — but anything i transmit myself just isn't making it to the IS. checked my path and i've got it set to WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 which should be fine right?

the igate that used to pick me up is about 12 miles away, ran by W4something, and i honestly dont know if he's still on. might be the igate went down and not my setup at all. is there a way to check if a specific igate is still active without driving over there? i looked on aprs.fi and i cant tell if it's showing received packets or just the last known position.

also semi-related — anyone running direwolf as a software igate on a pi? thinking about just setting one up myself at this point. my location is decent, i'm on a small hill and already have a 2m antenna up for other stuff.

yeah the igate question is easy — go to aprs.fi, search for the igate callsign, and look at the raw packets tab. if nothing is showing up in the last hour or two it's probably down. you can also check aprs2.net and look at the server stats, sometimes you can see which igates have been heard recently depending on how the data is aggregated.

and yes absolutely set up direwolf on a pi, i've been running mine for like two years now as a receive-only igate and it's rock solid. just get a cheap RTL-SDR or even a baofeng with a cable into the pi's audio in and you're most of the way there. the direwolf docs are actually really good, bob bruninga wrote that software for a reason. main thing is get your PPM offset dialed in if you go the SDR route or you'll have decode issues.

WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 is fine for most situations, dont overthink the path. if your packets are being digipeated locally then the RF side is working, almost certainly the igate. i had the exact same thing happen to me last spring — my local igate guy upgraded his router and forgot to port forward again, took like three weeks for anyone to notice lol.

the pi igate idea is good. i'd say go tx-capable if your location is as good as you say, could be useful for messaging during events or whatever. just make sure you're compliant with the passcode stuff for transmit igates, its not hard just gotta register.