my swr meter battle

Hey guys, so I got a cb radio a while back, went to a shop to get it tuned, when I did, they said it was good, it wasn't!
So I decided to buy an swr from ebay. i did so, it never showed up for a while, so I contacted the seller, they had it shipped, gave me the tracking number, and as they said, the package was sent, and it said it had arrived. well it was never here. so no i'm still without my swr and can't use the cb...
so now, does anyone have an old swr to donate? I can't afford to buy another one, and I'm trying to get my money back from paypal but it's not looking good.

Anyways, if someone has something let me know. thanks!

 

a bit far for a cb tune lol I'm in Kelowna b.c canada

 

no one wants some rep? lol

 

What's an swr?

 

I will be up in Vancouver in mid march 2010 if you need help!! Hope u will have it done by then, though!!!

 

have you checked out any car stereo repair shops around? They might help, or a 4X4 shop, or an RV shop.

 

SWR is Standing Wave Ratio. Its a ratio of transmitted power to reflected power.
You want all the power your radio transmits to launch off the antenna. High reflected power due to antenna mistuning or poor installiation subtracts from the transmitted power. Its not quite I am transmtting 10 watts and have 5 reflected back from a mistuned antenna so I am geting only 5 watts out but its close. Here is a copy from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_wave_ratio

"The most common case for measuring and examining SWR is when installing and tuning transmitting antennas. When a transmitter is connected to an antenna by a feed line, the impedance of the antenna and feed line must match exactly for maximum energy transfer from the feed line to the antenna to be possible. The impedance of the antenna varies based on many factors including: the antenna's natural resonance at the frequency being transmitted, the antenna's height above the ground, and the size of the conductors used to construct the antenna.[1]
When an antenna and feedline do not have matching impedances, some of the electrical energy cannot be transferred from the feedline to the antenna.[2] Energy not transferred to the antenna is reflected back towards the transmitter.[3] It is the interaction of these reflected waves with forward waves which causes standing wave patterns.[2] Reflected power has three main implications in radio transmitters: Radio Frequency (RF) energy losses increase, distortion on transmitter due to reflected power from load[2] and damage to the transmitter can occur.[4]"

A tramsitter and even a receiver likes to see a properly tuned antenna most operate at 50 ohms impedance which is an AC measurement not an ohmeter measurement. The SWR meter allow you to tune the antenna for best performance. Antennas change length according to frequency. They get shorter as frequency goes up. Some amateur radio operating frequencies the antenna size is Huge, others a paper clip will suffice. Hope this helps

Gary Fiber K8IZ