Several things here. First - the antenna appears to be a low-end unit. I believe you indicated that it required a length adjustment to tune it to your frequency A good commercial-grade station antenna will not require you to do this. The best VSWR you have seen is 1.5:1. Most good antennas will typically do better than this.
Next - You indicate that changing the feedline length changes the VSWR. Usually this indicates that the antenna is not at 50-ohms and the change in length is making your coax act as if it were a matching section. Then - you indicate that the VSWR meter is a low-end unit. It may not be accurate. Finally, you need to get the LMR cable replaced with some Heliax. This issue has been beat to death here on Repeater Builder. Foil/braid coax is not recommended for duplex use. Sooner or later is will turn on you and you'll have noise and desense. This issue comes up here about every other week (or sooner). I'll assume you are new to this list. Chuck WB2EDV ----- Original Message ----- From: "agrimm0034" <agrimm0...@yahoo.com> To: <Repeater-Builder@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Monday, May 25, 2009 11:24 AM Subject: [Repeater-Builder] Re: New Transmitting Antenna SWR Question > The antenna is mounted at the tip top. The meter im using im sure is not > top of the line accurate. It's a basic cheap radio shack model 144/440 > band watt/swr meter. I can get a hold of a Bird 43 meter pretty easy to > check with if you think that would be better. Also im running 40 ft of lmr > 400 feedline > >
