Indeed you may be missing something…
From your description I infer that you have a WiFi Only model of iPad - tethered to your iPhone using either a cable or the iPhone’s WiFi hotspot.
If so, your iPad has no GPS capability of its own with which Location Services of the iPad can derive its location. Only WiFi+Cellular models of iPad have GPS - this being a function of the iPad Cellular chipset.
WiFi Only models can only “infer” their location from a database lookup of neighbouring WiFi networks for which the geographic location is known, or the geographic location of your public IP address. For static applications in urban locations, where the location of IP public IP addresses and WiFi networks are known, an “inferred” location can be relatively accurate. However, in rural locations, or when using a Cellular/Satellite/VPN connection, location accuracy of an inferred location [if it works at all] may be very inaccurate.
Your iPhone does have GPS capabilities - however, the iPhone’s derived GPS location is not shared with other devices via the tether.
All this has significant implications for non-static mapping applications. If my inference is correct, this is the source of your difficulty.
Your available options are:
- Substitute your WiFi Only iPad for a WiFi+Cellular model; this does not commit you to provisioning Cellular service for your iPad, but does provide the needed GPS functionality for the iPad.
- Add an external GPS receiver to your WiFi Only iPad. These are often used in marine, aviation and vehicular applications - and can be either directly connected via Lightning or via Bluetooth. Their are various third-party manufacturers, of which one is BadElf.
