Galaxy DX88HL

A word to newbies and others who need to learn an important lesson.

The swr meter that your radio has built in it sucks. They should find the idiot who thought of putting it in the radio and casterate him.

Get a good external meter and use it. Don't be fooled by the price.

When testing your swr, do not talk or whistle but use it at a dead key because the meter calibrates with a dead key, talking into the radio screws up that calibration and gives false readings.

 

Any real radio tech or hammy will tell you that the 18ft. coax statement is a myth. Like stated below, run what is needed from the radio to the antenna. The antenna is where you adjust your SWR, not with coax.

 

You have a good brand of coax. Don't trust your internal meter for SWR. Have someone with a true meter adjust your antenna and you don't have to get 18ft. either !!

 

If you are still seeing high SWR then your next steep is the antenna mounting stud and antenna itself. Changing Coax length should have seen a change in SWR which leads me to think you have ground problems. Even a stock Connex with the modulation limiter installed, set at 100% modulation should see more forward power, which is why I think you still have problems.

As far as the 18 feet is a myth. I've used 18 foot in every truck install (base station installs and some mobile installs are different in coax length required) for over 20 years and SWR has never been a issue. When you are using factory built antennas then 18 foot is the standard (you do know that today's antennas are nothing more than a compact 102 steel whip right?), regardless what some CB tech says. If you want to run a shorter coax then you will have to increase or shorten the over all length of the antenna to make up for it. When it comes to antenna setup's, there is far more to it then just bolting stuff up and hitting the road.

Hams are a completely different animal, when can you build antennas to resonate at a certain frequency then you can run different lengths of coax and still have a relative low SWR, but you also have to remember that most of the hams run some form of antenna tuner so at that point, over all coax length is not really a concern. Plus the bands operated on are completely different from the 11 meter band that CB radio ops use. As a Ham Can I build an antenna that FAR more efficient than anything you can buy, sure. Will that change the length of coax required, sure will.

So as i said. If you changed coax and did not see a change in SWR then either your meter is bad, which is why you saw no change (but you saw an increase in performance so you had to lower your SWR some what) or you have a ground problem...I'm guessing it's both. Keep working on it, I'll help if I can

 

..oh and yeah, antenna lenght does fool an SWR meter but I still say 18 feet is the best way to get low SWR for most CBer's. You want to get down to it, have a read....

http://www.radiomods.co.nz/coaxlength.html

 

Jesus, you just spoke blasphemy against the Radio bible... I'd normally go get my popcorn now, but it doesn't go well while watching "Christ's Passion" <--- I hope that comes across as sumwhat funny.
But I'm still watching the argument for, and against regardless.

 

Put a new antenna stud on it. take some sandpaper and clean off the mounting location to bare metal and then put your stud on. You could run a ground wire down from the mounting location to somewhere on the frame but not everyone wants to mess with that. Yeah, it's sounds like a ground issue, your antenna could also be corroded as well if it's old enough. A good cheap antenna to use and one of my all time favs is the Wilson Silver Load. It's super east to tune, works great and lasts plus, you can get them for around $25. Just make sure you get a 5 foot antenna if you have the run, taller antenna is always better as long as you have the room.

When it comes to radio, ground is everything and the one thing you can never have enough of.