Hello all, I'm fairly new to CB radios and bought a Cobra 19 Ultra III at Wally world and a mag mount antenna. I was receiving chatter and was fairly happy with it besides not getting a lot of range on it. Unless I was on the interstate, or near by it (say 2-3 Miles) I didn't hear anything.

Got a couple of Mic checks out of it and some people reported back that my Mic sounds bad. Others said I sounded fine. I thought maybe I wasn't broadcasting very strong and the closer the recipient the clearer my signal was.

I bought a cheap SWR meter on Amazon to try to tune my cheap mag mount antenna. (This one specifically: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004ULN610...p_mob_ap_share) and the SWR read extremely high (like 4-5). I don't know if these SWR meter reads correctly but I tried to get them both at the same SWR and lengthened the antenna some. Sort of got a better signal, but again through a radio check they said it sounded bad.

So this weekend I installed a 4' Firestik II, Firestik heavy duty spring, and a 9' Firestik ring cable on a mount made specifically for my truck. Grounded the mount hooked the antenna up to the radio and brought that little radio to life! I can pick up signals further out than before... Maybe close to 5 miles or so now. Tuned it with the SWR meter, and both 1 and 40 is reading at 2 (again not sure this meter is accurate, just trying to get them close).

So in this case, do I need a new Mic or radio? I thought about getting it peaked and tuned at a local shop but have yet to do so. Thoughts?

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