Sounds like a lot of coax between the gateway and the antenna, what are you using for feedline? Getting me neither up and running correctly took longer than I wanted, but most of that time was learning curve as I’m new to the LoRa thing. It would appear that their (RAK) latest installation script might make things easier for a newbie because it factors in the intended region. Since I bought the US915 “kit”, I was a bit surprised to find it preconfigured for EU spectrum.
Most of the tutorials you find seem to make the same assumption. The whole key is getting the global and local json files right, and I can help you with that. I ended up not using the SD card that cane with the kit, so I had to download raspbian stretch light and go through that process. You gotta get the reset script toggling the right gpio pin too.
Kersing has a GitHub repo with a modernized packet forwarder, but I haven’t experimented with that yet. It helps if you have some Linux command line skills, but I’ve been using Linux for over 20 years, so… I think there are some other forks of the semtech stuff that have good setup scripts that ask questions helping you get everything right.
Once I got it figured out, it’s really pretty simple. You have basically two processes running, an interface to the gateway hardware and a somewhat abstracted packet forwarder. The install script sets them up to start as a system daemon.
I had the same intentions of concentrating on nodes, not getting the gateway working. In retrospect, I’m glad that I went through the pain as it helps me understand how all this works. I’ve played with a couple of different types of nodes now. I’ve gotten a bsfrance lora32u4 working and the Rak wisnode successfully sending and receiving. You’re going to find that’s not quite as straightforward as you’d think. I believe the firmware for the wisnode has been upgraded to better handle a us region, mine set the wrong channel mask, so it was way off frequency. I’ve only done activation by personalization (ABP) so far. I’m ready to step up to OTAA now, but I’m still experimenting, so ABP is easier for me. To get OTAA working, you have to have transmitting and receiving working, but ABP will let you get packets to the application without struggling with reception initially.
Using a Linux based gateway let’s you monitor the log files which helps a lot. I also recompiled the software with more debugging messages enabled.
Problems I had with the bsfrance board included having to struggle with the bootloader when trying to upload sketches (it likes to use two different com ports in windows), soldering up DIO1 (the default solder pads are fine, but most people seem to be obsessed with moving it to D6 instead of just jumpering the pads). They have reasons, but it’s not important enough to me to worry about it; I don’t mind losing Serial1. I will start using ISP from now on though as I’m tired of trying to time pushing reset at just the right time to get an upload via the bootloader working. As for the wisnode, don’t jump to the “obvious” conclusion that it’s an Arduino shield. You can use it that way, but you have to fiddle with jumpers every time you want to upload to the Uno or use jumper wires to get Serial debug messaged out. I’ve only used it by typing AT commands manually. It does work, but it’s not a panacea when you want to hook it to an Arduino Uno. It seems that most of the LoRa/Arduino boards have unique quirks to get them working. You almost always have to find some manual way to hook DIO1 to a pin before it will receive packets. I’m digressing, so I’ll likely get chastised for being off topic by discussing nodes in the gateway area, but I sure wish I’d have been able to find this information all in one place when I was learning it the hard way. 
