Meshtastic

Ive found getting two heltecs works out to tell if the system is working or not. Then putting one very high (like on a chimney) and using that one was as the one the city connects with.

Lora is VERY much a line of sight kind of system. If anything gets its its way, it will stop sending. Its very fickle.

You may want to reach out to your local ham group (if you have one) and see if anyone is interested in metastatic. We had one person that was super into meshtastic put a node on a foothill nearby and it covers the entire city. It gets awesome coverage. But thats the only reason I can talk with others and its spotty sometimes.

An area's mesh network is a collaborative effort. You need to get together with others people and put some thought into your mesh. One more strategically placed node could help several people connect, who can come together to pool money and expertise to make the build less of a burden on everyone.

Radio is pretty fickle, have you tried different locations? The higher the better, different materials block signal, antennas can always be better. It's a real rabbit hole but i recommend it. Have you connected to MQTT, you should be able to find a local server and get an idea of who's around you.

I have a similar issue here. When our local router went down and then came back up, it was not as good at hearing as it used to be. So while I used to be able to get messages out reliably, I can no longer. So what I'm doing instead is I'm getting a treetop solar node and putting it up in my front yard.

I can hear just fine, but my transmissions only occasionally get acknowledged due to the more deaf router.