How can I get better reception on my CB radio?

I am a company driver for a mega. My company won't let me install my own antenna on my truck. I have to use the lousy factory antenna that is built into the interior of my truck. I have a Cobra 29 LTD Classic CB radio.

When I am driving down a highway, I seem to only be able to hear and communicate with drivers with CB radios within about 300 yards of my truck, and even when I can hear another driver, everything is fairly muffled.

Here is a photograph of the front of my CB radio so you can see all the various dials and switches on my CB radio:



Is there any way I could adjust the dials and switches to get better reception on my CB radio?

 

I have the same radio with a factory antenna, mine works great. Put your SWR/RF/CAL switch onto CAL, then put your radio on channel 20. Key the mic and watch the needle on the meter as you turn the SWR CAL knob on the far right. When the needle hits the red triangle that says CAL, let go of your mic, leave the dial where it is and turn your switch back to SWR

 

What does "Key the mic" mean? Does key the mic just mean press the "talk" button on the mic down? If so, do i need to speak into the mic when i do this?

 

Yes, just press the button, you don't have to talk into it. With the button pressed, turn the SWR CAL knob clockwise and watch the needle move to the red CAL mark

 

But after I do this, shouldn't i move the channel back to channel 19?

 

Yeah, channel 20 is just a good channel to calibrate it on

 

Done. I calibrated it. I'll find out how much this improved reception when i get back on the highway.

I now have the RF/SWR/CAL switch on SWR. However, before I calibrated it, the RF/SWR/CAL switch was always on RF. Do you think how i used to have the switch on RF might have been part of my problem?

 

switch it back to RF after calibrating to use radio.

did you read the directions?

 

No. I did not read the directions. I threw the directions away several months ago.

By the way, do you notice that what you wrote contradicts what dave wrote?

 

What brand of truck has CB antennae built into the cab? There’s no actual external antennae?