hooked up my radioshack swr meter and fired it up. no matter what i did with the tunable tip on my firestik II, i keep getting an swr reading greater than 3. i'm in now way shape or form a CB expert so i need some help! what are some options to get that SWR lowered?

 

Try checking or changing your ground wire.

 

I changed my coax cable and my SWR dropped from 3 to less then 1.

 

I am having the exact same problem and I have a 2ga ground. I think it is the Coax. I have even tried different antennas. You might check the continuity at your stud as something could be touching. That was the first problem I found. I am going to try a Firering Coax next to see if that fixes it.

 

I'm using the Firering coax. I bough the Cobra 75 SWXT package from Northridge with Teraflex tire carrier bracket, firering coax, and firestik II antenna. I guess the only x factor that I can think of was the pl-259 end I had to attach to the coax. not sure if i did that 100% correct or not.

as far as grounding the antenna goes, where on the antenna stud/mount would one attach to and what gauge wire would be needed?

also, I'm a little lost as far as checking for continuity?

 

Where and how are you mounting the antenna? If you are using anything painted than you have to remove the paint, make sure there is no paint on the bottom side of the mount. I thought I had all the paint off of my mounting point and didn't. Once the paint was gone all was good and didn't need to run any other ground wires.

 

I'm using the Teraflex bracket which bolts to the stock tire carrier. I'm now thinking that I will need to do a little work with the grinding wheel around the bolt hole... Would I need to just get it off the inside of the hole in the bracket or a little on the top and bottom as well? Also I'd assume then that I'd need to do the same around the holes where the bracket bolts to the tire carrier so it passes through to the end gate and ultimately the chassis...

 

I don't think you need to do the inside or top of the whole, just the bottom, and yes a grinding wheel with a dremil or similar will work. The CB guys that fixed mine use a dremil. I use a wire brush and that didn't cut it.

 

Looks like i'll have another project on the to do list for the weekend. Hopefully this will solve the issue.

 

I have a uniden 880 and can change the swr using the radio... No need to adjust the antenna