The Defpom Forum, for RadioMods, S&M Software and Music by The Defpom

Hi,

I'm new to cb radios as you can imagine. My friend and I both have cb radios fitted to our cars with magmount ariels. We can both transmit and receive about 20 meters apart and then it goes dead. We have both linked a swr meter up to the units and we both get basically the same reading. We set the needle to 'set' on fwd and then when you switch to REF the needle goes to about 8 and stays in the red area. Obviously we have adjusted the length of the ariel but this has no effect. We are sure we must be doing something wrong but cannot work out what it is! can anyone help us?? thanks joe

Hi Joe,
Welcome to the forum. When you key the mike does the needle go over to the right of the meter into the red, or does it go to the left.
Dave.

It goes all the way to the right in the red when i push the mic. I found yesterday that when i connected the 'tornado stinger' ariel it made receiving pretty good but i couldnt transmit back to the people i was hearing. Also i dont want to drive around with a 6ft ariel on top of my car so is there a way around that?

Joe,
Did you use the SWR meter and check the SWR again when you fitted the Tornado and was it lower than before with the other aerial ?.
What I'm getting at is, if the SWR is too high it will cause the meter to read a higher output than what is going out because of the bad SWR.
The DX27 is a much smaller aerial but works very well for it's size if you can find one.