so ive been messing with APRS for a few months now and the tracking side works fine, my beacon shows up on aprs.fi no problem, but when i try to send messages through the network they just seem to vanish. i can see my own beacon getting picked up by a couple of digipeaters about 8 miles out and then hitting the IGate at W4xxx but the messages never seem to reach anyone. tried sending to a buddy across town who was showing green on the map and nothing got through either way.

running a Kenwood TM-D710G into a mag mount on the car, path is set to WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 which i thought was pretty standard. the TNC is internal so i dont think thats the issue. ive checked the audio levels about a dozen times and everything looks okay. is there something specific about message routing that im missing compared to just beacon packets, or is this more of a coverage problem than i think it is

the D710 is solid so probably not a hardware thing. one thing that catches a lot of people is the message ack cycle — APRS messaging requires your station to actually hear the acknowledgment packet back from the destination, and if there are any gaps in the path coverage in either direction it just silently fails. its not like email where the server holds it, both ends need to be able to hear through the network at that moment. so even if your beacons are getting out fine, if your buddy's station cant get an ack packet routed back to you the message shows as undelivered and the radio just keeps retrying until it gives up.

worth checking aprs.fi and looking at the raw packets, you can filter by your callsign and see exactly whats being heard and by which stations. sometimes the picture thats obvious on the map doesnt tell you the full story about two-way path coverage.

yeah what he said about the acks is spot on. also just double check your MYCALL is set correctly on the radio and not still on the default or something goofy, ive seen that trip people up before. and WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 is fine for mobile, some people actually trim it back to just WIDE1-1 in denser areas to reduce congestion but that shouldnt be why messages fail entirely. if youre near a fill-in digi it should still get out.