CB Radio Help...SWR off the meter

Put the switch to FWD and while transmitting, turn the knob so that the needle swings over to the far right of the scale. You will probably see the word SET or a red mark at the end of the scale - make the needle line up with this.
Once this is done, and while still transmitting, switch over to REF and the needle should drop down to give you a nice low reading. If the needle hardly moves when you switch over or does not come out of the red portion of the scale - STOP transmitting - you have a problem, probably with the groundplane connection.

 

Yeah...I do all of that, but instead of the needle dropping down somewhere between 1 and 3 scale when I change the switch, the needle goes the other direction.

 

Possibly a short or open connection somewhere.

 

Also, make sure your connections are tight. Could be a bad meter as well. Does your friend who's radio you borrowed have one? Even though you are receiving transmissions, without having the SWRs set correctly, you're not transmitting efficiently & power is being directed back into your radio.

 

My neighbor finally got his CB installed in his Jeep Cherokee. Before we installed everything we made sure to test EVERYTHING with a multimeter to make sure there was nothing wrong. When we hooked up the SWR meter it did the exact same thing on his system as it has been doing on mine. I am thinking that the SWR meter is bad. I drove my truck over a mile away and we were able to talk to each other and the transmissions on both ends were crystal clear.
One thing I did notice was that when I reverse the wires on the SWR meter the meter drops to a more acceptable range (1-2). This is with the radio wire going to the antenna post on the meter and vise versa. I guess its possible that the manufacturer mislabeled the posts?

 

Today I hooked up my meter on my truck and my neighbors truck. I reversed the wires from what the meter is labeled and was able to tune both antennas to around 1.5.

Most of the websites say that a bad SWR meter is pretty rare, but after seeing how mine was either mislabeled or had the polarity reversed I could imagine this being pretty common. I would definitely check your system with another meter before changing a bunch of things.

 

Today I hooked up my meter on my truck and my neighbors truck. I reversed the wires from what the meter is labeled and was able to tune both antennas to around 1.5.

Most of the websites say that a bad SWR meter is pretty rare, but after seeing how mine was either mislabeled or had the polarity reversed I could imagine this being pretty common. I would definitely check your system with another meter before changing a bunch of things.