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I had both radios receiving the same net on the same frequency at my base station last night to compare their reception audio.

The S meters on both indicated a strong signal. The signal is from a repeater a little over a mile away. The 710's signal was crystal clear hooked up to a J-pole inside my shack. The 6a HT had a very noticiable amount of background noise (white noise).

Why wouldn't the 6a HT have a background-noise-free audio as well as the 710 mobile? Is there something that might not be set right? They were both on the precise same frequency, 146.925 MHz.

Does this represent the typical performance difference between a mobile unit and an HT?

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The more I learn, the more I realize that I don't know a lot more than I thought I didn't know.

.925? On 2m? Unless they are narrow-banding or weird splits, try .920.

73/k5zia

Whatever thing they were doing, both radios were on that frequency, both were receiving a strong signal, the HT had a lot of noise along with it and the mobile didn't.

__________________
The more I learn, the more I realize that I don't know a lot more than I thought I didn't know.

Did you try tuning to

.920?

__________________
"No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country.
He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."

~General George Patton, Jr.

Depending on the filtering (and other characteristics) of the radio front end, one radio may sound better than the other when receiving while off-frequency. Wide filtering vs. narrow...

Try comparing when receiving on the "center frequency" of a known repeater.

Not yet, but I'll do that. I should probably ask the operator of that net and repeater since the feeling here is that it is an odd frequency.

__________________
The more I learn, the more I realize that I don't know a lot more than I thought I didn't know.

Yes, I don't know for sure if either radio was set to "narrow" or "wide". I since reset both readios, so I'm not sure how either was set. I'm assuming they were both set at their factory default settings, whatever that is likely to be.

Even thought the HT is 1/4 the size of the mobile unit, I wouldn't expect the RX spec would be that much inferior to the mobile on a solid signal. So I must have set something wrong. That is the premise I am checking on.

On the other hand, as you suggest, this may be a consequence of an inferior front end compared to the mobile when "off frequency." And why would the net folks adverstise an "off frequency" frequency?

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The more I learn, the more I realize that I don't know a lot more than I thought I didn't know.

I just did a repeater search around your callsign, and the W4OE repeater is indeed at 146.925! Never ran into those out here in Texas. My bad assuming it should be .920!

Next step - were you using the same antenna to test both radios? Also, look for a 440 repeater to test against.