okay so ive been messing with APRS for about two months now and i cannot figure out why my position beacons are showing up on RF just fine (i can see them on my TM-D710 display being digipeated) but they almost never make it onto aprs.fi. like maybe 1 out of every 8 or 9 packets actually shows up on the website.

my setup is a TM-D710 with the internal TNC, WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 path, beaconing every 3 minutes. i'm in a pretty rural area, about 30 miles from the nearest igate i think. the digi i can see hitting is a fill-in WIDE1 only digi which i guess might be the problem? not totally sure how the igate chain is supposed to work here.

also tried bumping my beacon rate to every 90 seconds for testing and it didn't really help, and i read somewhere that too frequent beaconing is actually frowned upon and can cause congestion so i backed off. just not sure if this is a path issue, an igate coverage issue, or something with my settings on the radio itself.

yeah sounds like a coverage issue more than a config problem honestly. if the only digi in range is a WIDE1-1 fill-in, those typically dont have an igate attached, they just relay to hopefully reach a WIDE2 capable digi that does have igate coverage nearby. 30 miles from the nearest igate in a rural area is rough, there just might not be enough infrastructure to reliably get you on the internet side.

one thing worth checking is whether that fill-in digi is even set up correctly — some of those are cobbled together by random hams and might have weird path filtering. you could try SSn-N path instead and see if anything changes but honestly if there's no igate in range you're kind of stuck. have you looked at the RF coverage map on aprs.fi or the receiver sites on that page to see where the nearest actual igate is pointing?

the 1 in 8 thing is actually not that weird for rural APRS, i went through the same frustration when i moved out of the suburbs. what helped me was finding out there was an igate about 45 miles away that could occasionally hear me direct without the digi hop, and i adjusted my power and antenna to try to hit it more reliably. went from a magmount to a proper quarter wave on the roof and my hit rate went way up.

also dont sleep on the APRS tier 2 network stuff, some igates feed into that and have better coverage than you'd think from just looking at the map. but yeah your path looks fine to me, WIDE1-1 WIDE2-1 is the standard recommendation for mobile/portable and bumping beacon rate doesnt really help if the igate just isnt hearing you in the first place.