[aprssig] Question abt recommended path

[Jim Moen]

This question will demonstrate my lack of knowledge, but I know I need some education.  I am a user of APRS and don't run a digipeater.  I have a Kenwood D700 and GPS in my car and have successfully used the path RELAY,WIDE2-2.  I got an APRS message suggesting RELAY was obsolete, so I searched the archives of this list.  Here is what (I think) I learned:

 * In densely populated areas (I think my area qualifies), RELAY and WIDE, and anything greater than WIDE2-2, are not recommended
 * There's been some discussion about just what is recommended.  One recommendation, as I recall, was WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1
 * I thought I saw another recommendation of APRS,WIDE2-2

In addition to getting the APRS message, it seemed to me that the closest digipeater in my area, W6CX-3, was no longer reliably digipeating me. Other digipeaters in the area did.  I wasn't sure if W6CX-3 had changed its rules recently, or if another one had popped up and was causing collisions, or what.  But I decided to change my path to see what would happen.

Here's where I'm going to show my ignorance.  I changed the path to APRS, WIDE2-2.  Not only would the local digipeater not repeat me, but when I drove close to other digipeaters that repeated me with my old path, those stopped repeating me with the new path.

So I changed it to WIDE1-1,WIDE2-2.  Now it looks like all digipeaters that hear me, including W6CX-3, will now repeat my location.  

My dumb question:  is WIDE1-1,WIDE2-2 an OK path, and if not, what do you experts recommend for my relatively densely populated location? 

  Jim - K0ZXU 
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