so ive been running APRS for about 6 months now with a TM-D710G and it shows up fine on aprs.fi, my position beacons are hitting the network no problem, i can see myself moving around when i drive which is cool. but the messaging side is just completely broken for me and i cant figure out why.

sent a few messages to another local ham who also runs APRS and he says he never gets them, and when he sends to me i get nothing either. we're both showing up on the network so its not like we're digipeated out or something. im using WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 pathing same as always. his radio is an FT-3D so totally different setup.

honestly not sure if its an IGate thing or something with how i have the messaging configured on the radio. the 710 has like a billion menus and i wouldnt be shocked if i just have something set wrong. anyone dealt with this?

yeah the messaging on APRS is kind of its own thing separate from just beaconing. your position packets going out doesnt necessarily mean your message packets are formatted right or getting acked properly. one thing to check on the 710 is whether you have the APRS message status set to receive -- there's a setting buried in the APRS menu that controls whether the rig is even listening for incoming messages or just transmitting beacons.

also the IGate situation matters a lot here. if theres an IGate near you thats receive-only (which a lot of them are) your messages might be getting into the APRS-IS network fine but there's no two-way IGate to push the reply back out to RF. messaging really needs a bidirectional IGate in range and a lot of areas just dont have good coverage for that. you can check on aprs.fi by clicking on your nearest IGates and seeing if they show both RX and TX capability. RF-to-RF messaging between two mobiles should work fine without any IGate involvement though so if youre both in the same area and hitting the same digipeater that part should work regardless.

check if you have message ack turned on, i had a similar thing a while back and it was just that my retry count was set to zero so it would send once and give up. also worth firing up Direwolf or even just aprsdroid on your phone temporarily to see exactly whats coming across on 144.390 -- sometimes you think you're transmitting but the audio levels are off and the packets are just garbage on the air even if the radio thinks it sent something.