Francis are great antennas, no tuning at all. Very strong and very limber they do not break like a firestick. I am running a pair of 5' francis mazer's, 1.1:1 match. very happy with them and have been using francis antennas for years. I ahve never had a tuning issue with Francis Antennas. I run a standard co-phasing harness uncut full length I make sure that my grounds are very good and clean, checked with a Fluke multimeter. I also use a thruline wattmeter with a 10 watt slug to check swr. Anyhow its all opinion I supppose, I have been messing with CB radios since about 1973 or so.... Good Luck.
I was thinkin changing my antenna to try n get rid of skip. With rf gain open all the way it holds 20. At night time its back down to 3.. lots of skip it sucks.
Since you've got a radio with an RF gain pot, you've already got a built-in solution to the daytime skip noise problem. If you were to change to the shorter and less efficient antennas, you'd be handicapping your transmit signal as well as your receive at a time when there's more "stuff" out there for your signal to compete with when you want to talk. If you're able to just find a good place on your RF gain control where the noise doesn't drive you nuts during the day, though, you won't be crippling your transmit signal. Then, at night (or whenever the skip dies out), you can nudge it back up. Easier, cheaper, and you get to keep your full TX capability. Hope that helps. 73
I don't know how much you run in the upper tier were there is alot of snow and ice but we can't keep any fiberglass antennas lasting over a winter season mostly. Francis included. Now my Wilson is holding up real well. it has smacked its share of over head stuff when doing hot mix belly dump work, It has had a pheasant wrapped around it more then once. The last one cracked the mount but did nothing to the antenna.
