so ive been messing with APRS for about 3 months now and i finally got my TM-D710G set up with a proper antenna on the roof and i can see my own packets getting digipeated locally when i watch aprs.fi but theyre not showing up on the IGate side at all. the local digi is maybe 8 miles away, clear shot, i can hear it hitting the digi because the led on the radio flashes when it retransmits

im running WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 in my path which i thought was pretty standard. im in a semi-rural area outside of tulsa and there are maybe 2-3 igates i can see on the map within range. signal reports from other guys look fine on 144.390 so i dont think its an RF issue. been digging through the aprsis32 docs and my head is spinning a little honestly

is there something dumb im doing wrong or is this just a coverage gap thing where the igates arent hearing me directly and the digi isnt connected to the internet? i kinda assumed all digis were also igates but maybe thats wrong

yeah that last part is your answer probably — not all digipeaters are connected to the internet. a digi just retransmits RF packets, it doesnt have to have any APRS-IS connection at all. whoever set that digi up may have it running totally standalone. you'd need an igate that can actually hear you (either directly or after the digi hops) to get onto the internet side of things.

check aprs.fi and click on the digi callsign, see if it shows any igate activity or an internet connection listed. also you can try messaging W2 or looking at findu.com to see what path your packets are actually taking. if the igate is hearing the digipeated version of your packet it should still upload it, but if the igate's antenna is pointed wrong or it's got RF issues of its own nothing gets through. WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 is fine for your area, thats not the problem.

had basically this exact same issue last year. turned out one of the igates nearby was running really old software and was dropping packets with certain path combos, which was a whole thing to figure out. but honestly before you go down that rabbit hole just try keying up a quick position beacon manually and watch aprs.fi in real time, give it like 30 seconds. if nothing shows up and you know the digi hit it, then yeah its the igate side thats broken somewhere in the chain.