SWR reading extreemly low, is this right?

[Eviltwin]

Hi i've just got a new rig loosely fitted in my passat estate, to try it all out, untll i get a disco in a week or two.

The rig's a midland 98+, with a thunderpole TZ27 mounted with a mag mount, right in the centre of my estates roof (should give a half decent groud plane)

Thing is when i went about trying to check the SWR readings, the needle is barely moving (typicly no movement or just a flicker up to 1.1:1 over all the channels).

I know the pack said 'low SWR', but surely it cant be this low?

As a check to see if the meters reading ok, i fitted the thunderpole Orbiter i got for green laning (not yet SWR'ed), this was showing on the meter an SWR, out of the pack of about 2:1, droping slightly towards the lower channels, so i am confident the meter is working fine.

Any ideas, or am i just lucky with this antenna?

[stampman]

get some lottery tickets while your luck is in and put me down for 5 percent

[Eviltwin]

ok now its daylight, some further experimentation has shown the following:

as the antenna is able to be moved in and out of the base coil for tuning i shifted the whip as far out as possible (about 4" ), which upped the SWR readings, to about 1.4-1.5:1

Shifting the whip all the way in has also given SWR readings, but when i move the whip back to the red mark at the top of the base coil i go back to getting next to no SWR

Also i tried moving the mag mount from dead centre of the roof to the front centre and back centre of the roof.

Whilst this gave no diffrence in SWR, i did notice that i was able to hear more people on a wider range of channels, although these were mainly truckers i think (i live in the middle of a housing estate about 3/4 of a mile from the A1, and the houses do seem to block out a lot of signal) Moving the antenna back to the centre of the roof seemed to give me less available people/channels.

Does mag mount position affect ability to pick up other people, and if so where's a better place to put the mount on my roof?

[stampman]

no not normally just leave in center of roof with lowest swr

[POKO]

Hi new bloke here

Also have a low swr reading got an orbiter 80 for off road use and the new super nova for on road use coupled with a Midland 48 Plus the swr is non existant on both antennas on low channels and 1.2 on 40, the Antenna is mounted heath robinson style to the bull bar but unless the area is exceptionally quiet is cant seem to contact anyone except very occasionally pretty much nothing on local but a few bearly audible on DX

Is this right or am i doing something wrong,

Thanks in advance for any advice

POKO (Mitsubishi Pajero LWB)

[stampman]

MAKE SURE rf gain is turned up full and the local dx switch is set to dx as this can make a hell of a diferance to the performance of the 48

[POKO]

Cheers Stampman

I actually managed to speak to someone this morning approx 10 miles away so well chuffed

Many Thanks
POKO

[stampman]

good glad you got it working

[Gav]

Wow that is a really good reading.I have attempted to get mine that low but failed mine is at 1.4..

Cheers Gav

[stampman]

1.4 is good enough to run a burner as well make sure the rig is not putting out more than 4 watts or good bye burner

[Gav]

Ok stampman i shall remeber that

Cheers Gav