Brian replied:

Smithy things to consider, are the vehicles the same, same bar work,same antenna location ??? this can make a difference.
Also have you soldiered the antenna conections, soldiered connections are better. I have the 3400 and it is great, better reception than my old uniden sundowner, small and esay to remove when parked in the big smoke.

Smutty replied:

The shielding connection is crucial for the power to radiate out of your antenna(AE) and not be reflected back into your transmitter stage of your set. The inner wire should be soldered to the center pin and the outer sheaf should be soldered to your outer plug(read Earth). It is important that none of the sheafing comes into contact with the main wire as this will be seen as reflected wave. Solder all joints where possible and take these other things into consideration. Is the coax length the same for you and your mate? Does he recieve the same using both AEs? Can you fit his coax and AE to your set for testing? And lastly sets do some times, have different output power levels, although they are stated as 5 watts. Usually Unidens suffer form this fate and after a $30 service where they just tune the crystal for better output your back to 5 W. GME are generraly more reliable and i would say your problem lies in your coax. Hope this helps, Smutty

John replied:

G'day Smithy,
UHF is a Funny Animal, It is Very Dificult to rate on install over another unless the Setups and Locations are Identical.
To fairly compare both setups you will need a third for tests as follows.
Get the Third Vehicle to drive away, say about 5 or 6 Kms so your signal strenght meter reads about half way, on a 3400 lets say +5 on the meter.
Make sure this third vehicle does not move an inch during the tests.
Now postion vehicle 1 and mark on the ground the tyre positions...
Now Get the Third vehicle to transmit and take note of the recieved signal strenght. Now transmit in vehicle 1 and get the third vehicle to take note of his recieved signal......this completes tests to vehicle 1.
Next move vehicle 1 and position vehicle 2 in exactly the same spot as vehicle 1 just left.....Do this as acurrately as posible as a few inches can make a big difference (Sorry no double meanings here!).
Conduct the test on vehicle 2 the same as vehicle 1.
The results will give a clear indication if one is better than the other.
This is the only fair way to compare unless of course one is always under all conditions better.
Many things will affect performance including Some of the things mentioned above.
If one only transmitts better than the other, Battery Voltage or Transmitter tuning may be a factor.
If one Recieves better than the other Reciever Tunning may be a factor.
But if one Recieves and Transmitts better than the other, Coax and antenna may be it.

Cheers
John

Andrew replied:

Smithy, the answer truely lies in the coax. I have the same setup as you ( but in a troopy ), and I had a problem where I just couldn't get the distance of the others. What I found was the coax that came with the aerial had a manufacturing defect in it, ( it had air bubbles all up and down the centre conductor ) which was only found once I put an SWR meter on it. It showed that I had nearly 100% of my signal being reflected back into the radio. Luckily it was a quality GME because there was no damage to the radio, even after many months of "Why are other people getting further than me" testing. I replaced the coax with a higher quality replacement cable, and have never looked back.
Cheers, Andrew