I was thinking this too… I powered down all the T-Beams except the Sombrero with the diepole and obviously the mountain repeater…
Sending messages and waiting for the check mark in the cloud icon is the best way I know to do this… At times it is very good and I get ACKs to many in a row… Other times it’s less reliable.
All these tests were all done with both units in stationary positions, line of sight to the mountaintop, 2km away.
I wonder if for for the less technically endowed, or for real-world, out and about with your phone type testing, if we could implement a ping request from within the app? for example if you send a text message with “–sendping”, any receivers that get the message could reply with a text message. I think this would be a lot easier than trying to scan debug data as it flies by, while you’re trying to walk…