Tuning CB Antenna SWR

David01se

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Nov 15, 2016
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Location
Madison, WI, United States
I have my Uniden Pro 520XL installed with a 3 foot fire stick. I now have to set the SWR. All the you tube videos say to use channel 1 and 40 for this process. The directions I found on fire stick’s site say to use channel 1, 19 and 40. In this order. The Uniden manual states...set the radio to channel 20, and adjust antenna until the SWR is as close as1.1 as possible.

Is there a preferred method or will all get the same results in the end.

Thanks
 
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I have my Uniden Pro 520XL installed with a 3 foot fire stick. I now have to set the SWR. All the you tube videos say to use channel 1 and 40 for this process. The directions I found on fire stick’s site say to use channel 1, 19 and 40. In this order. The Uniden manual states...set the radio to channel 20, and adjust antenna until the SWR is as close as1.1 as possible.

Is there a preferred method or will all get the same results in the end.

Thanks

I have always used 1 & 40 and never had a problem with it.
 
It is far faster (!) and easier to just use ch 20 to tune the antenna for minimum SWR. Ch 20 is dead-center between 1 and 40. Tuning it on just 20 will assure the best possible SWR from 1 to 40. In addition to over 50 years of HF-UHF antenna experience, I used to tune large antenna farms for the Air Force and we tuned each antenna only at the mid-point of the frequencies in use. No need to tune at each side which only takes longer without benefit.

The bottom line is if the SWR is as low as possible on 20 it'll be balanced and as low as possible all the way from 1 to 40.
 
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