Radios sensitive to certain antenna(s)?

[JBRPong]

Have a Radtel RT-730.  Only seems to work well with the Smiley slim duck antenna.  The receive is terrible with multiple 771s and even the Abbree folding antennas which all work great on the Baofengs and Wouzuns that I have..
Is this normal?  

[Guest]

I’d venture to guess it is not making contact properly.  Since they make a specific 771 type antenna just for that radio series I’d bet it has something different from the other sma female mounts.    Same thing for a Motorola ht. You can screw in a boofwang 771 into the xts3000 but it will. It receive or transmit at all.  

[MaxHeadroom]

All antennas have resonance - and that resonance is part of the entire transmitter design. In commercial LMR it’s why anyone says “stick with the stock antenna” as it’s been designed for that transmitter and for best performance. 
 

With these radios, there is no engineering going into the transceiver/antenna design and matching so I know some want to find something “better”. The Nagoya antennas are typically the “gold standard” but there’s A LOT of bad clones of them. The Abree “tape measure antenna” - skip it. Last few I got my hands on swept resonant in UHF around 420MHz - nowhere close to the 465ish range you need for GMRS/FRS. 

[WRXB215]

1 hour ago, MaxHeadroom said:

The Abree “tape measure antenna” - skip it. Last few I got my hands on swept resonant in UHF around 420MHz - nowhere close to the 465ish range you need for GMRS/FRS.

Was that one of their GMRS antenna or just a UHF antenna?