Given the logs you’re showing: am I right to assume you were really issuing those commands directly? Hence: for those tests, you did not power off the device between the two mac join otaa commands? (I’m asking as I’d assume that upon a power down the device would forget about any RX2 settings it might have received in the EU868 Join Accept, unless you somehow issued a mac save after the join.)
Also, it might help to know what the failing OTAA Join Request is actually sending? Maybe some screenshots from TTN Console can help. Or, as a Join Request is not encrypted, an online decoder can also decipher it.
Indeed. And for this to work when powering down the RN2xx3 between transmissions, one needs mac save after the OTAA join (and after each transmission, for the counters and all). Probably unrelated, but with an RN2483 version 1.0.1 (Dec 15 2015 09:38:09), I’ve run into an issue with that: after a factory reset, I needed to set (dummy) values for the (ABP) DevAddr, AppSKey and NwkSKey, for otherwise calling mac save after mac join otaa did not save the Join Accept settings, or the subsequent mac join abp somehow did not recognize those.