so ive been trying to get APRS working for like 3 weeks now and im losing my mind a little. running a Kenwood TM-D710G with the built-in TNC, 144.390 which i know is correct for north america, and my callsign with SSID -9 set in the radio. i can hear packets coming in fine, the radio is decoding them and showing stuff on the display, but when i key up and beacon my own position it never shows up on aprs.fi. at least not from my own transmissions.

i checked the path and i have it set to WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 which should be fine. power is 50 watts into a vertical on the roof so its not an RF issue. i even drove past the local igate last week and watched the screen, i can see other stations being picked up by it no problem.

wondering if maybe theres a timing issue with my beacon interval or the smart beaconing settings are doing something weird. or maybe the SSID is the problem somehow? i honestly dont know where else to look at this point

had almost the exact same thing happen to me when i first set up my D710. the radio was transmitting but turns out my TX audio level into the TNC was way off and the packets were basically garbage on the other end, so igates were hearing something but not decoding it properly. check your deviation — there's an internal pot on some of the older firmware versions that can drift. also double check that you're actually in packet mode and not APRS-mode without the TNC enabled, the menu on that radio can be a little confusing with how it handles internal vs external TNC.

the WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 path is fine, thats what basically everyone uses. and -9 is the right SSID for mobile which is good. if you can borrow a second radio or SDR and just listen to your own transmissions, that would tell you a lot about whether the audio is actually clean or not.

aprs.fi sometimes lags or filters stations it hasnt seen before, i noticed mine took almost a full day to show up the first time even though the igate was picking me up. you can check the raw packets on aprs.fi by going to your callsign page and looking at the raw tab — if the igate is hearing you itll be in there even if the map isnt showing you yet. that would at least tell you if your signal is getting through at all