(disclaimer: I make the Signal Sticks). A more common issue that I see with *all* aftermarket antennas on many Baofeng radios is that some of them have very poor filtering and in those cases you may find that the stock antenna receives better than the aftermarket antenna because the radio gets “deafened” by signals on frequencies other than what you are receiving on. It’s somewhat like how trying to pick out a single flashlight on a mountainside full of lights; it’s awfully difficult to see if it is on or off. If you can “filter out” all the other lights by looking through a pinhole at just exactly the right spot, though, you’d be able to see if it’s there or not. With a radio with poor filters when you put a better antenna on it *all* of the signals get louder, not just the signal you want — and that causes the radio to not be able to pull out the signal that you need. With the stock antenna everything is “dimmer” which makes it easier to pick out what you want, but it also means that you aren’t able to pick out as much overall. Not all baofengs suffer from this, but it’s common enough that I have a list of links that I send people having this issue to help show that I’m not just trying to excuse the performance of the antennas that I build and sell 😉 Either way, good luck all.