The importance of a CB antenna in an excellent CB system can hardly be overemphasized. It is the most critical factor for determining the overall output of your CB radio. To enable a CB antenna to perform its best, it needs to be tuned and appropriately calibrated with the help of an SWR meter. This fine-tuning would enable your CB antenna to adjust to your CB radio and your vehicle’s ground plane. It would help if you tuned your CB antenna as accurately as possible because a slight variation from the required SWR can harm your CB Radio. So
to be safer, first install your CB antenna and ground it properly as prescribed in the setup manual. If you want to improve your SWR even further, consider doing it with an SWR meter connected separately between your CB radio and CB antenna. Your target is to achieve a ratio of 1:5:1, which is the most optimal SWR ratio for any CB system.
You first need to determine the type of CB antenna you have. Then adjust its length to make its tuning easy. Stryker CB antennas are easily adjustable, so you don’t have to trim their whips to get an appropriate length for fine-tuning the antenna. Then calibrate your antenna with the SWR meter on all the channels one by one and obtain the same SWR reading across all the channels as prescribed in the manual.