Poor reception on RAK 11310

[Th3H0ff]

Hi all
To migrate my discussion from https://meshtastic.discourse.group/t/same-box-but-poor-connectivity-with-rak11310/15328.
I've fiddled some more with my RP2040 RAK 11310 and the result is the same. For example I recently placed the device among other nodes in a rural mesh. Traceroutes were sent with 0 hops to my base but incoming traceroutes to the device always took the path via some of the nearby nodes. Has anyone had the same experience with the RAK11310? Also the battery consumption isn't that impressive, not as bad as an ESP32 device though.