[OZAPRS] Fill In Digi needed

[Bob]

Hi

I'm Bob, VK2BYF, in Nowra

Having lost our local digi some years ago and our local ham population 
being very sparse we seem to have dropped off the APRS map.

My Tiny Track in my motor vehicle can't be heard by the nearest Digi, 
VK2HIM near Gerringong, until I gain some altitude.

To get myself back on the APRS map I decided to build a RX only Igate 
using a Raspberry Pi, RTL-SDR & direwolf which seems to work ok.

I experimented with a laptop running direwolf, KA2DDO's YAAC and a 
FT-817 as a fill in digi, Wide 1-1, which also seem to work ok.

The next phase was going to be to setup a RF digi using a cheap Chinese 
VHF/UHF Radio to fill in the local RF hole we have here in the 
Bomaderry, Nowra area.

Knowing very little about APRS but the basics and having been monitoring 
this forum for a while, I have more questions than answers.

A wide 1-1 to fill a local hole is that rite or wrong?

RX only IGate to fill a local RF hole, Is this going to cause problems?

Should I even bother to build a proper RF in and out digi?

What is the best configuration just to fill in a local RF hole and get a 
fair section of the Princes highway back on the map?

BTW I prefer to run things on Linux. YAAC, a java applications work very 
nicely on Linux.

Regards Bob vk2byf