using a RigExpert 55 to set up a wilson 5000 on my buddys car not my first time setting up an antenna and i can't get it to set so im looking for the type of coax and velocity factor for the coax hoping that helps with setting up the RigExpert so i can get the antenna to set so here is the deal the antenna swr jumps around then settles at 11 and trimming the whip has made no improvement's but i threw it on the radio to see what it would say and 40 is 1.6 20 is 2.7 and 1 is 3.5 now i know that's telling me its to long on the radio but why is not matter what i do the RigExpert telling me its an 11 its very annoying and i don't want to cut to much of the whip so i'm at a loss at this point i'm new to using the RigExpert but it really shouldn't be that hard to set a wave the whip is either short or long the magnet is the ground to the car there's not much else left to figure out
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what coax comes on the wilson 5000
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Is it a new antenna? When I had one, the coil housing cracked and got water in it. Then another time, the coax connection inside the coil became disconnected. I run a Sirio 5000 now.
Last time I had a Wilson antenna that would not tune I cleaned the end of the whip that goes into the loading coil. It had accumulated some corrosion over the years. Brought SWR from the 10:1 range down to about 1.4:1.
Maybe use a coat hanger wire in place of the whip to experiment with cutting the length. Is it in the center of the roof with no metal beside it?
correct it is well i took the top coil and whip off my old 5000 thats 13 years old and it works great on it so i'm going to use that whip for reference metal coat hangers are hard to come by these days
First thing I would do is clip on an extra length of stiff wire to the top of the antenna and see how it goes as you trim it.
With those SWR readings the antenna is already too short, not too long. Resonance at 1:1 (if it gets there) is going to be up higher than channel 40 by a ways IF the SWR is always climbing as you go down the channels to channel one.
First thing to check is the solder job on the PL-259. It is easy to mess that up, I still do once in a while after 53 years of soldering them! If the factory put it on then it is probably okay.
I would check how the antenna is mounted, any ground problems etc. Sometimes due to proximity to other things nearby, especially real close things, they may interfere with getting a good reading.
Radio SWR readings and that of an external SWR bridge or analyzer will all probably be at least some difference.
If the SWR jumps abruptly around when you measure it look for a bad connection somewhere. The most obvious place is the PL-259.
Sometimes with magnetic mounted antennas the SWR only gets so good and not as low as you might like it to be. There is not always a real good bond from the magnet to the body through the paint.
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yeah not sure why the rigexpert was reading so high but yet the radio wasn't i know their will be differences in meters but no matter what the rigexpert sat on 11 if it was really that high the radio would have been pegged out i also had it backwards to i said if its high on 1 but low on 40 its to long but really its to short so i checked the VF of the coax thinking that would make a difference it didn't i gave up on the rigexpert and used a swr meter to set it i used the rigexpert to check out my home set up and everything reads fine have no idea why it was reading so high on his mobel i took 3 very little pieces of the antenna it was 11 when i started and when i stopped it was bouncing from 9.9 to 10 thinking this is not right i put my top from my old Wilson 5000 on it and the radio read it as a flat match he got a RadioShack meter and it also read it as a flat match then when he put his top back on basically the whip read to short so he raised it almost as high as it would let him to get it to come back down now it reads real good with the meter and radio not sure what the deal with the rigexpert is did i get a bad one ? but if so why does it show good on my home set up but just would not work for his mobel set up it stumped me i thought getting a rigexpert was going to be great and tell me all kinds of great things and be a better way of setting up an antenna but it turned out to be more hassle than it was worth so basically it was giving me a false reading from the start and i had it check 1-40 it was the same on all the channels that's not right and trimming just a tiny bit didn't do much i knew that wasn't right either
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yeah it ended up being to short i had it backwards thinking high on 1 low on 40 was to long the thing that got me was before doing anything the rigexpert said it was an 11 that was not true on all channels 1-40 i even made sure before doing anything the whip was the correct 62" and it was i even tried setting the correct VF for the coax that didn't change anything had it been a problem with grounding or the PL259 it still would not have matched perfect to my top off my old wilson 5000 because i gave up on the rigexpert i didn't check it on my top just to get a comparison but i know its flat as i set it that way 13 years ago with a meter and ran power through it without issue so the problem seems to be with the rigexpert but then again it seems to show fine at home on the base set up so really i have no idea what its problem is and i was setting his antenna up in a open field closed doors none around his car
Replaced the stock 18' RG8x on the Wilson 5000MM with a 1/2 wave of RG400 tuned for 27.3MHz. Very happy with the improvement. A lot less noise from the superior shield, a lot more crush proof for going through trunk/door jams, much higher power handling, and a true SWR reading of the antenna's input.
I used the stub tuner in the coax tools of the Rigexpert 55zoom. You can make a 1/2 wave stub for a given frequency either by shorting or not shorting the cut end.
From personal experience, you will get a lot better result by shorting the cut end - more accurate and a more stable reading on the Rigexpert. Takes more effort, but worth it. Radio's built in SWR meter shows flat from channels 20~40. Start at 13 feet and carefully trim down.
I used the stub tuner in the coax tools of the Rigexpert 55zoom. You can make a 1/2 wave stub for a given frequency either by shorting or not shorting the cut end.
From personal experience, you will get a lot better result by shorting the cut end - more accurate and a more stable reading on the Rigexpert. Takes more effort, but worth it. Radio's built in SWR meter shows flat from channels 20~40. Start at 13 feet and carefully trim down.
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