Good Antenna

In my last post i was referring to quality of ant..A wilson works but its not IMHO worth the money...Sure its ok to set up for some guy who does local p/d and dont reallt care...For a more serious cber or someone who wants to add power down road and or an export radio,go for a better ant...

As for working on a radio,i know nothing..Me and electrical stuff dont mesh...#### near killed myself yrs ago when i walked off a pool deck and an electrican left a powered wire on the floor for a min when he turned his back..I stepped on it and lets just say had a rough week after it....

 

Well...You don't go sticking a screwdriver in the back of a tube amp with it still plugged in and turned ON...But allot of stuff related to tuning a CB Radio or the antenna is not rocket science either...There's plenty of things you can learn to do it yourself on the Internet just by Googling around a bit...

I do agree with you tho when it comes to doing allot of Mod's to a radio, if you don't know what your doing or are not familiar with the parts or just dont have a steady enough hand to do soldering on a board, it might be better to let someone else with more experience do the work...

But just hooking things up, or tuning a antenna that is something that I personally would not trust some yo-yo at a truck stop cb shop do...

We learn from our mistakes...What's that old saying? "You have to crack a few eggs to make a omelet?"

 

Im promice to not stick screw drivers where they aint supposed to be...

I got no probs in mounting ant,re routeing coax and tuneing my ant and stuff...Its been a steep learning curve compared to days when i bought a radio/coax/ant and mounted it and down the road i go..
Sence i bought this last radio and another predator and more coax,my head is now deep into this stuff tryin to learn more..

 

Oh and i got me an mfj analyzer assumeing it would do the trick,now someome mentioned dield strengh..Sheesh..Will it ever stop lol..

 

The MFJ 259b analyzer is one handy piece of equipment when it comes to tuning a antenna...I use mine on every antenna I hook up because it will tell ya allot more info than what a regular SWR Meter will give you...Main thing with the MFJ, is don't get all bent out of shape trying to get a 1.0 swr reading with 50 ohm...Get the lowest SWR reading you can, with X=0 on as many channels as you can is the best thing to do...

 

I know a perfect match is almost impossible so the 1.6 i got now is darn good..
With tuneing knob i got a zero on x but my r went up to 83 from high sixtys...in advance mode i get a 94% match..
I get a 6db loss when ant is hooked up and a .3 when not..I know because I have a high percentage match it doesn't necessarily mean I have all that power going out to my antenna..my biggest confusion is how to transfer the data I'm reading off the tuner and transfer it to ant adj..
I have to dbl chk coax for short i may have caused but mfj doest show no distence to fault..
until I understand how to use this tuner it will create more problems then I understand how to fix

 

it seems that usually I will get one problem settled but that one problem create a different problems elsewhere if I can get my r closer to 50 my x goes up..love to have some local that could show me this #### cause im loosin my dang mind..

 

Im temped to mount my predator up top in back of my volvo,even though i know its the worst place in most cases..Gettin desperate in get the numbers at their best to use my radio to its sweet spot sorta speak..
I need a video to watch that shows how to with the mfj..Something that sez if you do this it will make this better or worse..

 

Best thing to do, is get your SWR as low as you can on channels 1 and 40. Then go from there trying to get X=0...On the outside chance the best you can get is the 1.6, then your other options is to maybe try and find a different mounting location for the antenna, OR maybe a longer antenna or one that's made differently like a center load vs. a continuous loaded fiberglass...

You mentioned Predator. I've been using Predator 10K's since 2002, and am a personal friend of Kales who builds the things...For as that go's, he use to give me New antenna's to try out, and see how well they worked in real world conditions, and how well they tuned.

One thing with the Predators, is sometimes the short-shaft ones won't tune as low as the longer shaft 10K''s do, and since people are sometimes limited as to where they can mount one, that also will affect how well one tunes...

On some vehicles, there may not be a way to get a antenna to tune as low as you wish it would simply because of the mounting location...And Big Rig's can turn into a royal nightmare because in most cases your limited to just being able to mount to mirror brackets that may or may-not have a decent ground.

 

Well i have the 8" shaft single coil and swr is 1.6-1.7 across the board..I got x down to zero messing with it useing turner knob on my mfj but how or what do i do to transfer that info to the ant..As in what does it tell me to do..
Basically useing my mfj i turn the know to get x to equal 0but what then,dont i have to change something somewhere on the ant????
Mfj sez i got a 93-94% match on 1-20-40 and a 6db loss when ant is hooked up but .3 when not..
Hell i went through all the options i know of using the analyzer and copied every freakin # down..
Not knowing what its telling me is what i have to learn when i can sit in front of my pc..
There is a book i tried to d/l but i cant find the free pdf version of understanding my ant analyzer...
A ways back i discovered by plugging in my gps i get static on my radio(one sits on top of one another)same when i touch gps screen...Just a lil while ago i discovered that when i was doin a gear change on the truck i let it idle and my radio was almost dead quiet with no sq....As soon as i grabbed a lil peddle the static started again...I got a noise filter on it now and been looking into somethin called a ferrite do flicky...Seems to me that i once pulled my coax out of the radio and still got engine whine...On my stryker i barely hear it....
There is somethin stupid that im missing...I have cleaned everythin a few time,grounded cab to ant mount on mirror arm,used a ground strap from ant mount to mirror mount..
Im at my wits end here..Dont think it will help by moveing ant up as high up behind the cab as i can next to my qualcomm rec dish..