CB SWR trouble

Evening guys.

Installed my midland 78 alan CB, antenna on middle of disco roof, CB installed middle of dash.

Now, I hear people in my village very clearly and when I'm out on the roads, however I don't seem to be able to get a response from ANYONE, which leads me to believe that no one can hear me, tried many occasion to engage convo but nothing, any tips?

I've got the turbo magnet and whip.

Best regards

Well, I'd narrow it down two possibilities. Possibility one is that you are not actually transmitting. Possibility two is that everyone hates you. It is only really a problem if you ARE transmitting and getting no response. That would confirm that everyone hates you. Hope this helps

Google was more help mate, cheers though yea

Seriously, though. ARE you actually transmitting? Have you checked?

with that rig and mount ,,you will only get about 9 or 15 miles max mate ,,just because you can hear them dont mean they can hear you ,,your rig is about 10 watts ,,they may have 25 or more watt rigs ,,
if you wont to talk to them ,you will be better off with a more powerful rig or get a mini burner and pre amp for your truck ,,,hope this helps

No hadder, was going to nip into maplins and buy a swr tomorrow morning before work, just wondered if you guys had any issues with your CBs.

Thanks major, they sound really clear though, could it still be that they are quite a distance away? Sounds like theyre home-based as well tbh.

major truma 2 said:

with that rig and mount ,,you will only get about 9 or 15 miles max mate ,,just because you can hear them dont mean they can hear you ,,your rig is about 10 watts ,,they may have 25 or more watt rigs ,,
if you wont to talk to them ,you will be better off with a more powerful rig or get a mini burner and pre amp for your truck ,,,hope this helps

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Not unless his rig has been illegally modified. Legal limit is 4Watts for a cb in the UK. even radio hams who want to transmit on 10ntrs (27Mhz) are restricted to 4 Watts if transmitting on the bandwidth allocated to CB channels.

redhand said:

Not unless his rig has been illegally modified. Legal limit is 4Watts for a cb in the UK. even radio hams who want to transmit on 10ntrs (27Mhz) are restricted to 4 Watts if transmitting on the bandwidth allocated to CB channels.

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Spot on I'm a radio ham.Plenty of power on the bands but 4 watts on 11mtrs.First stop is an swr meter.The meter will tell if your transmitting and also it will give you your swr dont transmit till your sure ur swr is 1.1:1 or there abouts. If you are transmitting and your swr is high it will wipe out your pa (amplifier) in the rig which is a pain.
swr = standing wave ratio ano yawn yawn

i used to de-tune my swr slightly back in the day as it gave better results.

Cheers folks got myself an SWR, getting average of 1.2 throughout the 40 chans, max being 1.4 iirc, lowest being 1:1, managed to get Nr Buckingham, MK to Junction 10 m1 earlier, pretty pleased.

Freelaner said:

i used to de-tune my swr slightly back in the day as it gave better results.

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ahh yes cb was a lot of fun back then with big long firefly whippy aerials,really bad 10 code and maybe a bit of dx depending on how the skip was doin lol

On the subject of swr you need to check it in the middle of your rigs operating range.If its a straight 40 channel job check it on 20 then compare it to channels 1 and 40 as the swr changes as u go thru your antennas operating range