CB Tuning/SWR

Therefore ideally the CB antenna should be on the right rear of the bike but make sure the cable for the the CB antenna is also routed to the right rear. Quite often the music radio cable and the CB cable are connected to the wrong antenna by the stealer

That's why I always tell people that I tell about swapping the antenna to verify that the left cable actually goes to the box under the trunk. Just in case the PO put the CB antenna on the right to get better broadcast distance.

Maybe one of these days I should switch the cables and the antenna on my bike so I can talk to oncoming traffic instead of the cows. They aren't such good conversationalists.

However the mass that the bike has is so small I wonder how much difference it would make in transmitting distance anyway.

Body mass is important as is ground plain. Some manufacturers (HD) use a metal plate under the trunk. They attach a ground to the transmitter and to the antenna. Some day I will have to experiment and see how much this helps. I know for the vhf radio on marine applications, wood and fiberglass, we used to use a fairly sizable ground plate. For automobiles and trucks this obviously isn't needed. It probably wouldn't be needed on motorcycles either if there wasn't so much plastic used now days. Might just be worth looking into.

Mike

if you set it on ch1 and 40 it should be good to go. you can all so split the difference and check ch 20 to make sure it's good to go. the swr will effect the noise level to a certain degree but there are things such as solar storms and RF in the air which will drive the noise level up. this is one thing I'm Farley knowledgeable about after driving a big rig for over 20 years.