SWR...Am I safe with this?

Your safe with it. SWR is, in laymens terms, your signal strength.
Not a real accurate definition of SWR.

The lower your SWR the better. If it was up around 4 or higher you would risk burning out your CB.

What you can do if you want to bring your SWR down is you need to trim your Antenna. If you have a metal whip just clip the top of the antenna. Don't take too much or you will end up buying a new one. It'll take about an hour of clipping and getting a reading to get your SWR down to about 1.5.

Your not bad where you are now. If the current set up does the job you need it to do. Then I would leave it alone.

 

its not great, but im gonna have to say your safe with it, radio shack coax and such is pretty good stuff actually, i know a few hams that swear by the stuff, your setup sounds pretty functional, only thing i would change is the antenna for something name brand. and 102" i dont know how far you wanna talk, or loud or any of that, but a new antenna would be the first thing i would upgrade. ....

blah!!! thinking about it, the place probably isnt a very good one. you probably need to either dual it up or try and center the antenna somewhere. maybe on the back of the tool box.. instead of the side (if thats where it is) its not an ideal place but its better there then on 1 side. The only thing youll need to worry about there is your antenna below the cab back of the cab, it could mess up your signal, you may only talk infront of you or in back of you or something... trial and error my friend....


a longer antenna will pobably make the swr a little lower anyway, and a lot easier to tune

 

I hope this link helps you out. maybe info overload but that's not a bad thing.

http://www.advancedspecialties.net/cb-radio-faq.htm

 

Anything under 3:1 is fine. Anything 2:1 and under is good. Anything under that is excellent. Don't worry unless you start going 3:1 or more.

And, no offense, but to the other replier, SWR is not even close in laymens terms as "signal strengh". It is simply a ratio of power that does not make it out the antenna and in turn gets blasted back into the radio. It can then damage the radio. Normally reasons that SWR is high also are the same reasons that can cause lack of reception and effective power out, but are not one and the same.

 

2:1 means it is twice the "minimum value" and you want to hit the minimum value if possible.

I'd check over on www.cbradiotalk.com those guys are real good folks.

If you're running anything more than legal power, you don't want it much over about 1.3:1... otherwise you'll learn what a burnt final costs to replace.

Furthermore, it's not a measure of POWER (fwd power is measured in watts), it has to do with the amplitude of a "standing wave" ... CB uses AM, do if you had a 2:1 SWR, then only half the radio's modulation power is actually radiating from the antenna... thus it's more a measure of how efficiently the power you're generating is being used. More of less. LOL

 

Boy, if those guy's ain't about a joke....Bozo is the main joker...

 

I don't want to start a war here but the SWR stands for Standing Wave Ratio and is shown in a % or fraction on these SWR meters. If you put a 2 way Watt meter on it you would see exactly what it is doing IE FWD power verses Reflected. Thus you get the ratio. This link and chart are not the best i have seen but they explain it pretty well. http://www.firestik.com/Tech_Docs/SWRLOSS.htm

POWER LOSS AT VARIOUS SWR
READINGS AND RESIDUAL POWER

Compliments of Firestik[SIZE=-1]®[/SIZE] Antenna Company Technical Support Team

Copyright [SIZE=-1]©[/SIZE] 1996 Firestik[SIZE=-1]®[/SIZE] Antenna Company
SWR (Standing Wave Ratio) affects the power output of your radio. The following table shows the effect of SWR for a transmitter with 4 watts of transmitted power.
* ERP = Percentage of Effective Radiated Power SWR READING % OF LOSS ERP* WATTS AVAILABLE 1.0:1 0.0% 100.0% 4.00 1.1:1 0.2% 99.8% 3.99 1.2:1 0.8% 99.2% 3.97 1.3:1 1.7% 98.3% 3.93 1.4:1 2.8% 97.2% 3.89 1.5:1 4.0% 96.0% 3.84 1.6:1 5.3% 94.7% 3.79 1.7:1 6.7% 93.3% 3.73 1.8:1 8.2% 91.8% 3.67 2.0:1 11.1% 88.9% 3.56 2.2:1 14.1% 85.9% 3.44 2.4:1 17.0% 83.0% 3.32 2.6:1 19.8% 80.2% 3.21 3.0:1 25.0% 75.0% 3.00 4.0:1 36.0% 64.0% 2.56 5.0:1 44.4% 55.6% 2.22 6.0:1 51.0% 49.0% 1.96 7.0:1 56.3% 43.8% 1.75 8.0:1 60.5% 39.5% 1.58 9.0:1 64.0% 36.0% 1.44 10.0:1 66.9% 33.1% 1.32

 

wow, thanks for that. I wish the table had formatted correctly, but even still, that's valuable information.

basically, what that table says, is that if you have swr of 3:1, you are only putting 3/4 your power to the air, the rest is being absorbed within your radio. so if you have a 'stock legal' rig, that means with 3:1, you'll be only pushing 3 of your 4 watts out that antenna.

MUD DUCK!

As you can see, since it is a percentage/ratio, it gets much worse the bigger the numbers get. Try running 400w PEP thru a 3:1 SWR antenna setup, now you have your finals 'gritting their teeth' on 100w of reflected power. However, with the recommended 1.3:1 tuning, that's only 6w reflected with the same overall power.

Bad SWR = poor signal strength and the potential to fry your gadgets
Good SWR = good signal strength

But neither is a measure of power, per se.

Thanks, kd5drx.