CB Radios

[kazam401]

Aimed at mark g8awo : Whats the best way of tuning in cb ariel without swr meter?

[mark g8awo]

Aimed at mark g8awo : Whats the best way of tuning in cb ariel without swr meter?

Basicly there is no easy way to tune a aerial without some kind of meter. I install large aerials for radio hams in the southeast for a radio emporium and i use whats known as a analyser @£400 but this saves me a lot of time and effort in hauling something that can be as large as 300ft long or a multiband vertical of about 30ft tall.

So if you want to safegaurd your PA invest a few quid in a reasonable quality SWR bridge it will save you a lot of money in repairs to PA transistors also good quality aerials help. Some of the cheaper aerials have a very narrow bandwidth which result in poor performance.


The easiest way to tune your aerials is to set your channel to the centre of your usage put the meter to set making sure the radio is on low power with radio in transmit (TX) you the adjust the scale for full deflection. You then put the meter to REF and by going to the either end of the band you the read the reflected SWR but dont touch the meter from this you can get an idea which way the whip needs to go.

If the aerial is resonant at the lower end of the band then the aerial needs to be shortend and the reverse for the top end. The aim is to get the reflected SWR down to the minimum at the point at which you operate the most but do not panic if you can not get the aerial to show no movement on the meter below 2:1 is ok but optimaly 1.5:1 and below is what you are aiming for