CB Help

The antenna tuner wouldn't be of any use to the original poster unless the shop allowed him to keep it.

 

Sounds like he was using an antenna analyzer. If so, he only needed to be connected to the antenna and not the radio.
How is it working? Get any radio checks? Recieve seem to be working ok?
That should answer your question, as long as everything seems to be working good, I'd say he set your antenna correctly.

 

Dont give up!!!
There's a lot of trial and error that goes along with this stuff. What works for one, may not always work for you. You just have to keep tryin till ya find what works. I wouldnt jump to conclusions until you know for sure...

Keep in mind also, there may not be much radio activity goin on where you are. Some truckers dont have their radio on, or have it turned down, or are just too lazy to reach up and grab the mic to reply to a radio check! Or they may not run a cb at all! Activity varies day to day in a lot of places.

The shop guy is right though, for max recieve, run your gain all the way right, your squelch all the way left. But as you said, all you here is static. What I do, find somewhere where there is no cb traffic, and all you have in your recieve is static. Look at the recieve signal on your cb's meter. Back the rf gain knob down until there is no, or very little, signal registering on the meter. This should eliminate most of the static. You can leave the squelch all the way left, or you may have to bump it just a little. For example, my rf gain is usually set between 1-4 oclock, my squelch is usually off-9 oclock. Dont do this around power lines, or anything that produces "extra" static into your radio. Also, if you have a noise blanker switch, (N/B....ANL) keep these on.
This is the method I prefer compared to the rf gain all the way up, and adjusting the static out with the squelch.

Best advice I can give, is to read up on this stuff. Find out how and why radios and antennas work the way they do. Arm yourself with knowledge, that way you'll know when to call bs on some truck stop cb hack! Google is your friend...

 

I'll bet he did you right. I'm never satisfied with a "radio check" until I get a buddy to check it with. At least you know he is where he says he is when you ask him. You can also run the dial and find somebody on a base station when you are running at night and ask for a check. Ask if he'll help you check it and get several checks as you travel away from him. A radio check with an "unknown" mobile doesn't really tell you much.

 

It's only realistic for two radios to hear each other from 30 miles away Mobile to Mobile at 4 watts if those two radios were tuned at Fine Tune CB Shop because how far you transmit is determined by how low the noise floor in the other guys receiver is.
I only know of two different guys in the country that can drop the noise floor in a receiver down as low as -125db. Unless both radios in a conversation have a noise floor that low, those two radios will not be able to communicate back and forth at that distance at that power level . That is why it is so critical to choose a technician wisely to get the most value for your money.

 

You should be able to talk and hear about 5 to 10 miles with a stock radio out of a tractor trailer and if it's out of a car with an antenna in the middle of the roof you can add another 5 to 10 miles on top of that with a stock radio. Keep in mind most people have crappy receiver sensitivity and most people don't have a clue about how to operate their radios and drive down the highway with the squelch knob crank all the way up and they can't figure out why they are unable to hear anything but as long as someone knows how to operate their rado properly they should be able to hear you a minimum of 5 miles out of any vehicle and if they don't hear you then you could possibly have some antenna problems. If you'd like to test it out you can wait until you talk to another driver that's going the opposite direction from a fuel stop and tell him to turn his squelch all the way down and as you drive in opposite directions keep talking to each other to figure out your distance. The reason you hear so much static in your receive is because the technician that did your peak and tune does not know how to align a receiver and drop the noise floor and based upon that I suspect he probably damaged your transmitter section as well or misaligned it to be more precise which would decrease the performance of it. Most stock radios right out of the box will transmit 3x further than one that has been modified by 99% of the radio technicians out there. There's probably about 300 radio shops around the country and there's only about 7 or 8 that employ a technician with any formal training. Out of the 7 or 8 with formal training only two of them can drop the noise floor on a transceiver down to
-125 DB and between those two different technicians only one of them has consistently perfect audio. And If we knew the shop that did the work on your radio we would probably be able to figure out if that was the problem you are experiencing now that your antenna situation seems to be much better. When your radio was brand new you could have saved yourself some money by not letting anyone touch your radio and focusing on the antenna problem and I guarantee that would have been the solution from the very beginning.