so ive been messing with this for about three weeks now and im pretty sure im missing something obvious but cant figure out what. running a TM-D710G with the built-in TNC, got it set to beacon every 3 minutes with WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 path. i can see my own packets decoding locally on the radio display but they're almost never showing up on aprs.fi — sometimes one gets through, maybe every 30-40 minutes if im lucky.

theres definitely a digipeater about 8 miles from me, i can see it beaconing fine on 144.390 and it shows up on the map with good activity. so its not like the local infrastructure is dead. my antenna is a mag mount on the car which i know isnt ideal but it shouldnt be this bad right? when im mobile it seems even worse, barely a trace on the map.

checked the TX power, its at 50W. ssid is set to -9. not sure if the issue is the path, the antenna, or something with how the 710 is configured. anyone dealt with this before?

the path you're using is fine for most situations, WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 is pretty standard. my first suspicion with what you're describing is actually RF getting back into the TNC somehow — mag mounts on cars can do weird things especially if the ground plane isnt great. the 710 is sensitive to that.

one thing worth checking is whether the digipeater is actually hearing you at all. if you have access to a second receiver or can pull up a webSDR near you, monitor 144.390 while you key up and see if your packet even makes it to the digi. if the digi isnt hearing you then it doesnt matter what your path says, nothing gets to the igate. the 8 mile distance with 50W should be totally workable but terrain and that mag mount could be killing you more than you think.

also double check your MYCALL is set right in the TNC config, not just in memory — ive seen the 710 where those get out of sync and weird stuff happens with how packets get formed.

had almost the exact same thing happen to me last year. turned out the local digi was hearing me fine but the igate downstream was only running during certain hours because the guy who ran it had it on a timer or something. checked aprsdirect and could actually see my packets being digi'd but they just werent making it to the IS. worth checking if your packets show up on any of the direct RF monitoring sites vs aprs.fi specifically.