What am I missing?

At the Loves in North Platte NE talking to drivers on cb and talking about cbs, and it seems the number one problem is always Swr. A driver bought a Uniden pc 78 xl, 9 feet coax, 6ft firestick at a cb shop in Wells NV about 7 months ago. He said the last 2 weeks or so the antenna warning light started to come on so I checked his swr and it was 3+ , so I checked the base of his attenna to see if possibly the copper wire had broken, checked the coax connection at the attenna and radio, and even put my 5.5 ft Francis on and swr was still a 3+ ,and I get a 1.7 on my 2016 cascadia with that Francis ( he is driving 2016 cascadia with wilson mirror bracket mount). So with my limited knowledge I am at a loss I dont know where else to look, and also checked coax where he ran it in the door hinge to see if it was pinched and it wasnt. I advised him to hookup to factory attenna( actually talked to him 3 miles away) and he is going to stop at cb shop in altoona Ia or council bluffs and see what is causing sudden high swr. Anyone have any thoughts on what I might of missed.

 

It was 3+ on ch 1,20 and 40 and he said it has only been high that last couple of weeks so how does a attenna system develop a grounding issue just like that when for 7 months no problem unless attenna mount got some moisture in it or coax suddenly went bad, dont know looking for some ideas.

 

That was probably it then, it was definitely not a stainless steel mount and he did run alot of west coast team operation with CRST, guess I just didnt think it could happen that fast ( 7 months) because Im sure he bought that new with the rest of it. I told him also that he should get his radio retuned, he allowed the guy in Wells to install echo, poor mans talkback and if he turned the mic gain any higher than 12:00 it would squeal, leading me to believe that limiter was removed or maybe he just needs a noise canceling mic or have the talkback removed.

 

And it never fails there is always at least one know it all that says that he sets his swr with his calibration knob everymorning, really didnt know it was that easy and all these years Ive been shortning or lengthning the whip.

 

What gives you the impression I would recommend anyone using echo, I was trying to get some input as to why the swr would suddenly go higher like it did with that drivers setup.