Newbie Antenna Questions

[tobybul]

Hi All. Setting up a new cb (president Johnson II). Bought it with a Wilson Lil Will and swr meter. Could not get ideal reading on Antenna. 40 was 3.5, 1 was 1.1. Trimmed it and lowest I got was 2.5 on 40 and 1.5 on 1. Trimming more would have increased Ch 1. Swapped it with a cheap Tram 300 and tuned to the nose. Still playing with it and still open to changing antenna. Not sure about durability of Tram. I know there's a few out there. Just curious if anyone has used magnetic mount Hustler antennas.

CB World has them on sale. Are they any good. Open to suggestions and advise. Thanks.

[The DB]

The lil wil is known to have a very narrow SWR bandwidth, this is because of its size, all very small antennas have this "problem". Typically when tuning with SWR you tune channels 1 and 40 to be the same SWR, with the low SWR point near channel 20.

To avoid a potential common problem with magnet mount antennas, you can use a barrel connector and add three feet of coax and see if SWR changes drastically. Depending on the install, sometimes you can just change how the coax is routed. In either case, if SWR changes you need to ask about it as you have a problem.

It is not always possible to get a perfect match. This is normal, especially with shorter antennas. Being a magnet mount, you can move the antenna around the vehicle and check there. Different parts of the vehicle can cause the antenna to have different SWR readings as the car is half of the antenna.

Any SWR below 2 is fine. A lot of people like to say 1.5 is the limit, but you won't notice the difference between the two when it comes to performance. An SWR of 2 should not hurt your radio unless there is already a problem with it.

Hustler antennas are fine. I don't put them higher or lower than the average compared to most other brands. When it comes to antennas, longer is better as it gives both better performance and a wider bandwidth. Even more important is the height of where the antenna is mounted, a shorter antenna mounted on the roof will outperform a longer antenna mounted on the trunk, if they have the same tip height.


The DB

[tobybul]

Thanks DB. Good to know about short antenna. Although i was wondering why the cheap Tram 300 also same length as Lil Will tuned below 1.5 on all 3 channels. I am shopping for a longer Hustler as they are more reasonably priced as wilsons and most other expensive antennas.

[Grinder74]

Always run rhe biggest antenna you can. The shorter the less power gets radiated, due to power loss in the matching circuit.