need radio help

Is plastic washer under the nut on your mount? How old is your coax?

 

If the meter won't calibrate, it's because your DK is not high enough for the meter...Most meters need at least 3w's before they can be calibrated...

Once you have done that, then if you have ground issues the needle would peg all the way to the right in the RED...If your still seeing something around 1.1 - 1.8 or so SWR but still not getting out, I would first try a different Mic...

I assume you have your Mic Gain knob turned up...

 

Maybe ...

The radio is cutting back power because of a very high SWR ... if he can't hear either sounds like the antenna is not working ...

 

DK is dead key, or what happens when you grab the microphone, and push on the pus to talk button so as to transmit over the radio, but instead you don't say anything into the mic, you just hold down the push to talk button.

 

Intelligence or intel can also mean information. It may have been just a poor choice of words.

SWR is standing wave ratio, simple explanation is it's a measure of how well an antenna and a radio are matched. A 1:1 ratio is perfect match (not possible here in the real world) OK readings are 1.3 to 1 or less but even 1.5 to 1 shouldn't hurt performance to much.
As jessejamesdallas said

Shorts and opens show up as extreme high SWR but no meter is accurate if it isn't calibrated correctly.

If I remember right you have to switch to cal, dead key, turn the adjustment to get to 0, then stop transmitting switch to ref. dead key again and that gives the reading. Someone please correct me if that's wrong, it's been a long time.

 

Okay, the first step in troubleshooting a CB radio is to find out the SWR or standing wave ratio is using an external SWR meter. The meter in the radio is often inaccureate for this purpose.
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If the SWR reading is 3.0 or higher, most of the power that you think is being transmitted out the antenna is actually being reflected back to the radio. Reflecting that much power back to the radio can damage the power transistors.
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So what causes the power to be reflected back to the radio instead of being transmitted from the antenna?
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.1 The easiest component to check is the coax. Try another piece of coax. If the SWR reading drops below 3.0, the coax is the problem.
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.2 The antenna is another relatively easy item to check. Substitute another known good antenna. Again, if the SWR reading drops below 3.0, the antenna is the problem.
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.3 The last component remaining is the antenna ground plane. The truck body is supposed to be an adequate antenna ground plane. However, if the body parts (door, door frame and chassis) are not connected together for RF [radio frequency] purposes, then the antenna ground plane is the problem that is causing such an abnormally high SWR reading. Fixing this requires bonding or interconnecting the major body parts of the truck together to form one large antenna ground plane. It has nothing to do with the electrical system.

 

If this slight setback has irritated you,I would suggest not having a radio at all.