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Hi CB experts! My CB has been nothing but a headache from start to...well...I haven't finished yet. Broken antenna, bad squelch and volume pots, SWR meter issues and now tuning problems. I installed a Wilson Flex 3' antenna with tunable tip. I like it better than the Firefly (or did like it better) because the Firefly is much fatter, achieving it's light weight by being hollow. I like the thin-ness of the Wilson aesthetically. I have the 203EZ folding mount. My bracket looks different from some I have seen and I think was adapted off something else. I modified it to move the antenna backward 3", placing it above the very back edge of the RH saddlebag so it the lid wouldn't bang into it when removing. The cable was already on the bike. I am intending to use a Firestik AR-1 duplexer/splitter. Went to tune it this morning, thinking this would be a slam dunk - just mess with the tunable tip and be done. Wrong! I was measuring with the splitter out of the loop, just the CB and antenna. SWR was super high, above 3 on all channels, but a little higher on 40 than on 1, so I lowered the tunable tip. Improved slightly. Finally removed the tunable tip entirely and got readings of 1.7 on 1 and just under 3 on 40. Ch 20 was somewhere in between, in the low 2's. Huh? What gives? Now I know that JB (lonestarmedic) used the same antenna on the same bike and got 1.5 at channels 1 and 40, I have something unique going on. I've studied this on the web, and here's what I already checked: - Bracket ground has 0 ohms to bike frame. Supposedly high SWR is caused by a bad ground plane 90% of the time. - Just for yuks, I added a ground wire from the bracket to the frame and SWR improved slightly, 1.5 on 1 and 2.5 on 40. The same happens if I hold the bracket with my hand. - Cable has continuity in the center and in the shield, but no short between the two - like it should be. - Putting splitter in the circuit made it worse - SWR way over 3 across the board. - Performed measurements in an open space. - Connecting the Wilson's "matching transformer" lead to ground made it worse. This makes sense. I don't understand this feature, but Wilson says it will lower the center freqency by 20 channels. My center frequency is already too low; I think it's below channel 1 in fact. - Tried removing fold-down mount - no change. - Double-checked how to connect and use the meter. So where do I go from here? Do I need to start removing material from the tip of the Wilson, even though it's supposed to have the full tuning range in the adjustment? What else? Frustrated, Jeremy
