Thank you Owen, Jim, Alan, Tam, Helmut, Jimmie and Jeff for all of the
great responses. I guess I should have provided more info
in the first post.

My station is in the foothills of Northern California at about 1200' elev
which is somewhat rural and is relatively quiet most of the time. Power
output is up to 500+ watts on VHF and the feedline to the antenna is about
90' of 1/2" Andrew Heliax hardline. The antenna is 43' up. Using my
previuos yagi, an M2 2M12, I worked stations as far as Oregon and San
Diego.

Good points on noise figures versus selctivity while considering noise floor
of the rig. I did try chercking the receiver noise with a Microlab dummy
load installed at the radio then with the antenna conneted. Yes, there is
more noise with the antenna connected. What is interesting is that with the
dummy load connected, the noise was just higher than wit the ope SO-239 at
the radio.

The responses have also steered my attention toward the 706G itself. While
it has been a great radio for several years, and offers fairly good
performance on many bands, designing this and similar multi-band radios
must include compromises. Perhaps I should be looking toward getting a rig
more tailored
to the 2m band and SSB mode? The Icom IC-910H comes to mind.

At this point, I will look more closely at the antenna/feedline system I
have and look into a better performing radio before investing in a
mast-mounted preamp that will introduce more connectors in the feedline and
which will likely require more maintenance as well.

Thanks again.
Russ W6OHM.