hey all, just finished with installing my antenna and took it back to the local shop to have it tuned. They trimmed it before it was ever installed which seemed weird, but i know little about this.
I brought it back to tune and he plug a meter into the antenna.
What im confused on is whether or not you can tune an antenna with out the use of the radio at all?
are there meters that dont require keying the mic to test SWR?
CB antenna tuning?
Discussion in 'CB Radio Forum' started by 4x4jeepmanthing, Jul 11, 2018.
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I can only assume he hooked up an antenna analyzer. You don’t need the radio with one.
Trimming before even installing depends on the antenna, some are simply known to have a certain bit trimmed off.
Did he tell you the readings? What kind of antenna is it? -
Yes you can tune an ant w/o a radio..Usually the radios meter is crap but good enuf as a guideline only..
You said he cut the whip before installing,well its a bit quicker to do so when you have a long whip just so it gets closer to specific tune without repeating the process 3-5 times..
A lot more to antenna measures than just swr.....Lots here to go over..Take some time to study ant stuff as well cause believe me when you have a good ant set up it don't need big power to reach out..
KØBG.COMOugigoug and Tensleep440 Thank this. -
When I bought a Wilson 500 mag mount it came with a stinger that was 62.5 inches long, the same length as my Wilson 1000.
I figured that Wilson put the too-long stinger with the 500 because it's easier than having two lengths of stingers in stock, and it is recommended the antenna be tuned before using anyway.
Ultimately, I trimmed the 500's stinger down to around 56 inches by going through many incremental quarter-inch steps. If I were a pro installing them with lots of experience, I would have cut about five inches off the stinger before starting the quarter-inch-cut-and-test process because I would know about how long the antenna would wind-up being in order to be resonant.
So yes, I can see a tech making a cut before testing in such a situation. -
Ok, the radio does not have a built in swr meter, I'm not sure if that's what was thought as written above. Ide always read the radio is used to key the Mic while tunning, this was never done on mine.
Do some meters do this on there own?Last edited: Jul 12, 2018
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On radios where they used a Antenna Analyzer to set SWR on the antenna, the Analyzer will do the keying, so again there's no keying the Mic since the radio wasn't even used to start with. -
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well thats good to see, being a bit ignorant I wasnt sure if these folks were just blowing me off or if it was a lack of what I did not know ( which is clearly the case).
thank you all for the clarity! -
Here's one with the 3' jumper coax, and Free shipping on Amazon for $28.
https://www.amazon.com/METER-Radio-Antennas-Jumper-cable/dp/B002KRME3C -
jessejamesdallas and rabbiporkchop Thank this.
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