so ive been trying to get my mobile APRS setup working properly for about two weeks now and im losing my mind a little. running a TM-D710G with the built-in TNC, got it configured with my callsign and SSID (-9 for mobile), set the beacon rate to smart beaconing which i thought would handle everything automatically. occasionally i see my icon pop up on aprs.fi but then it just stops updating. sometimes its 45 minutes between updates even when im driving around.

the radio is definitely transmitting, i can see the TX light and hear the packet burst on the audio. also getting decode from other stations fine so i know receive is working. i checked the path and its set to WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 which should be fine for my area. not sure if the problem is my smart beaconing thresholds or maybe my area just doesnt have great digipeater coverage. anyone dealt with this before

the D710 smart beaconing config trips people up a lot. check what you have set for the low speed threshold and the turn threshold - if your low speed setting is like 3mph and you happen to slow down in traffic it might cut the beacon rate way down thinking youre parked. also the corner pegging only fires when it detects a heading change above your turn threshold, so if youre on a straight highway it just uses the slow-speed interval.

also worth checking your path actually - WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 is the standard recommendation but depending on where you are some areas have moved to just WIDE1-1 or even just WIDE2-1 to reduce network load. if your local digis are filtering certain paths you might be getting dropped upstream even if you're hitting a digi. you can check if your packets are being received by digis but not making it to an igate by looking at the raw packets on aprs.fi instead of just the map. filter for your callsign and see what shows up and when.

had almost the exact same problem with mine last year. turned out my area had one igate that was basically the only one covering me and it was running some ancient software that was dropping packets intermittently. i figured it out by watching the raw stream and noticing i was hitting the digi fine but the igate wasnt forwarding everything. not much you can do about that except maybe set up your own igate if youre feeling adventurous, a raspberry pi and a cheap rtl-sdr is all it takes for receive-only.