More Power on 2m FM?

It’s an interesting issue. I recently tried 3 radios at the main terrestrial TV transmission site that provides a wide range of comms to Canberra, Australia. It’s a SOTA summit. The radio that performed the best for receive on 2 m on that activation was a "cheap Chinese" radio. My thinking is that it is a later designed one and has to work in the inevitable RF soup of the huge Chinese cities so has better filtering than legacy and more expensive units.

I had previously had a failed activation using an expensive Japanese HH on the summit that provides terrestrial TV transmission broadcasts that provides a wide range of coms to Adelaide, Australia. I also got the “we can all hear you but you can’t hear us” phone call.

I don’t thing cost or where the radio is made is a good indicator of performance on summits with lots of RF around.

The problem really is with with radios that use the RDA1846 chip (all Baofengs, cheap Yaesus, some TYT / Radioddity etc). That receiver is very easy to overload.

Some chinese handhelds are actually pretty decent, like the Wouxun KG-UV9D Plus for example.