CB antenna tuning?

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.COM

 

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.

 

Yes, the President McKinley has a automatic SWR checking feature, all you have to do on that radio is go to the SWR feature on the radio and without even keying the Mic it will start transmitting a tone to let you know if the SWR Is set correctly...

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.

 

Yes they do.

 

Still could be a shop ripping you off...Only way to be sure is to run out and buy yourself a SWR Meter and check for yourself...There's really nothing to checking SWR with a meter, and you can pick up SWR meters for under $20...You will also need a 3' jumper coax to hook it up, but usually places that sell the meter also sell the jumper coax cable.

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

 

It doesn’t need to be 3’.