So I've gotta give my big ol metal whip back to the guy who really owns it. I bought a 4' Firestik I and installed it on the old mount.

A few things to note:

-my old one had good SWR over all channels.
-the new one didn't at all
-i checked continuity on the mount, coax, radio and everything was normal
-all grounds are good
-SWR befor i messed with it was ch1:3, 20:3.5, 40:4ish...this would indicate that the antenna was long

I cut some off the end(little bits at a time) and the SWR is down to ch1:1.3, 20:2ish, 40:3ish...so I could use it now but I couldn't go up over Ch25. As I understand it, the SWR should have it's dip in the middle, around Ch20.

Each time I cut off more wire, the SWR just drops on all channels. So, do I just keep cutting and hope that the SWR on Ch1 starts rising as 40 is falling? Will SWR on Ch1 finally stop and 40 fall to meet it? TIA

Mr. Will

Give me ambiguity or give me something else.

Got an email back from Firestik:

"Keep cuttin'!! The KW antennas are purposely made on the electrically long side to fit a wide variety of vehicles ... especially those with insufficient ground plane counterpoise). You have good ground plane and so the antenna looks electrically long. You can remove wire until the swr on channels 1 and 40 is the same ... could be up to 6-10 full turns. I'd start with removing a full turn becuase the difference between high (40) and low (1) is about 1 1/2 points. As the swr gets closer make smaller cuts, 1/2 ... 1/4 .... 1/8 turn etc. As the antenna gets closer to resonance ... smaller cuts will have greated impact. When
you're done ... swr on channels 1 and 40 will be the same and channel 19 will be even lower.
"

Mr. Will

Give me ambiguity or give me something else.

How much did you pay for it?


"TSUNAMI"
1969 Nissan Patrol
Mods getting too numerous to list!
79,000 Original Miles!
FJ-40 Rear Axle
My All New Website!

$10 barely used from a fellow NOAS member

I got it tuned finally. SWR at 1 and 40 is about 1.4, and that's fine with me. I'm tired of messing with it.

I talked to one guy about 7-8 miles away and he said I was coming in fine. He sounded a little static-y but maybe that was his junk. I'll do some more testing tomorrow.

Mr. Will

Give me ambiguity or give me something else.