Brian,
The TTL thing is really just a bad setup on our part. From what I understand when you create a ipip tunnel in Linux in inherits the TTL of 0 if you haven't set it when you bring up the interface.
So without making adjustments to the TTL, you won't get responses from your amprnet-hops.
As for why Corey can't ping Brian N1URO I assume it's because Brian uses a munge script and maybe doesn't have a private tunnel route to Corey.
I know both n1uro.ampr.org and n3fe.ampr.org are both reachable one of two ways. By private tunnel and/or thru UCSD. So there is plenty of room for a routing headache. :-)