I recently purchased a Yaesu FT270R which I am using as a scanner to monitor area rail traffic. I have noticed I get better range than my Uniden Bearcat scanner, as expected, however the audio quality is not as clear as the scanner. I've fooled around with the RF squelch, and the regular squelch to no avail. I'm a newbie to HAM recievers. Any suggestions to improving the audio quality. The transmissions through the Yaesu sound staticy, whereas the scanner hooked to the same gain antenna produces loud and clear transmissions.
Poor audio Yaesu FT270R
- Thread starter Andrewo
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WA0CBW
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A little searching and I found some posts that a few people thought the FT270R was less sensitive than the FT250R for monitoring rail traffic. I'm not sure how that would compare to a scanner. Your statement that the range was better would indicate that it is more sensitive than your scanner but the quality of the sound was not as good. It could be that the 270 ,because it is more sensitive, may be picking up interference from nearby RF transmitters. It could also be that the 270 has greater audio distortion when turned up loud. It is kind of hard to tell what it might be without hearing the noise. It could also be that there is problem with the audio audio section of the radio. Do all received signals have the same staticy sound?
BB
BB
So to better understand the difference between the squelch feature and RF squelch is this correct. The squelch which I believe can be set with values from OFF to 9 will control what signals are recieved, based on the signal strength shown at the bottom of the display. The RF squelch has nothing to do with the signal strength at the bottom of the display, it merely changes the level that RF interference from lets say an adjacent laptop or router that is filtered out? Sorry for the many questions, but this is my first HAM receiver....
AC2OY
Member
Question....do all these handheld transievers scan other bands like weather,public safety...ect.?
mmckenna
I ♥ Ø
Actually, if I understand what you said, it's the exact opposite.
RF Squelch only allows a signal through if it is equal or greater in signal strength (as shown on the "S" meter) than what you set in that value. This can be handy if you only want to hear good strong signals.
The regular squelch controls at what level above the background noise you will hear.
At least that is the way it is on my VX-170.
mmckenna
I ♥ Ø
Yes, as long as they fall inside the operating band of the receiver. These radios will receive 136 to 174 out of the box, so they would be useful for receiving VHF band stuff, including NOAA weather.
mmckenna
I ♥ Ø
Could be the cause of the poor sounding signal is that the system you are listening to has gone narrow band. These amateur radios default to wide band. Check the menu to see if there is a wide/narrow setting.
A friend has the VX-270 and I have the VX-170 and they are pretty much identical in performance on railband. Both of them, with even the stock antennas, beat any of my scanners, hands down. I normally use an old Diamond dual band whip on it and it works great. I can hear hotbox and dragging detectors easily that my home scanner barely picks up unless conditions are just right. Audio is very clear and clean.
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