so ive been messing with APRS for about two months now and i cant figure out why my position beacons arent showing up consistently on aprs.fi. im running a Kenwood TM-D710G with the internal TNC and ive got it set to beacon every 2 minutes with a path of WIDE2-2. sometimes ill show up on the map for like an hour then just vanish. other times i can see my packets being gated but the position just doesnt update on the website.

the radio is in my truck and im mostly driving around suburban areas, not super rural. i figured WIDE2-2 was the right call for that but maybe im doing something wrong. also not sure if the beacon rate is too aggressive or not aggressive enough. ive read like 6 different pages on this and they all say something slightly different about optimal path settings so im kind of lost at this point

WIDE2-2 is fine for suburban/urban, actually you might even get away with WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 in a lot of metro areas since there are usually enough digipeaters around. the 2-minute fixed rate is probably your bigger issue honestly. with a fixed beacon interval you end up either flooding the channel when youre stationary or missing updates when youre moving fast. if the D710G supports SmartBeaconing (pretty sure it does) id turn that on instead — it adjusts the rate based on speed and heading changes so youre not hammering the channel when parked but you still get decent resolution on the map when driving.

the disappearing thing might also just be aprs.fi doing its own filtering or your packets not making it to an igate at certain points in your drive. check aprsdirect.com too, sometimes one site shows what the other doesnt. also worth looking at whether the packets are actually being received by digipeaters — the raw packet view on aprs.fi will show you hops if they're getting through at all.

yeah what he said about SmartBeaconing. also just double check your TX deviation is set right on the radio, ive seen D710s come out of the box slightly off and it causes packets to decode poorly. should be around 3.5kHz for 1200 baud APRS. you can verify with a scope or just ask someone local to listen and report back. sometimes the simplest stuff is what gets you.