RoadPro RP-550 30 Inch Ring Tunable Stainless Steel CB Antenna

Works good for my Sirius radio am/fm. It won't rust like my oem antenna did.

I am very pleased with this antenna. It works as well as any shortish antenna I have ever had, and my experience on the subject spans 60 years, most of it being a 2-way radio tech. In addition, the tuning method is the easiest I have ever encountered. I literally swapped SWR meters during the process because I couldn't believe the reading I was getting...imperceptible reflected power on channel 20. In this installation on my own car, I used an NMO hole mount and added a TRAM NMO to 3/8-24 adaptor between the mount and the antenna (I like the stability and wide footprint of NMO mounts, plus I've installed thousands). Doing some math in my head, I ran the tuning rings up about 4/5ths of the way up the threads and took a reading...it was perfect, first try. I got another meter and re-checked...still perfect.From a practical standpoint, if I had to find something to complain about on this antenna, it would be the open loading coil as they tend to "grab" tree branches and subsequently become un-coiled, but that is not the fault of this antenna, merely a downside to open coil antennas in general, and the open coil is the very feature that makes it look like NOT a CB antenna. If it gets damaged, I'll just shell out another ridiculously cheap eleven and a half bucks and get another just like it.

tuned up well 1 almost across the entire band. The full power of the radio is being sent to the antenna. I have not done a distance test but have got a response every time I TX from it. I expect it will be good for short distances without the look of a ridiculous cb antenna.

I bought this specifically in hopes that I could get it to tune to 29.58 to 29.68 MHz to cover a local repeater and the national simplex at 29.6 MHz. I cut just about an inch (a little bit at a time) and with the help of the tuning ring.....Yeah....it works perfectly. SWR is less than 1:1.3 across the frequencies I wanted to cover on a mag mount.A little road testing has proven it to be effective. I am pleased with it. I originally bought this to use with my backpack radio setup. I haven't done that, yet.

For what this is, it’s a great deal.I park in a garage so I needed something for everyday use that I don’t have to jump in and out of the truck to remove or fold down. So this product is a compromise. But it works well!It can easily tune to a small range of channels, but you won’t get great SWR across all 40 channels at once. For instance, you can tune for about 1.2:1 SWR from channels 16-22, which centers on channel 19. But it will be around 2.5:1 on channels 1 or 40.This year, the antenna held up to two months of winter salt and abuse and still looks and tunes like new.Transmit and receive seem just about the same as a (top loaded) 3 foot Firestick, which I had before this. I was pleasantly surprised.If you absolutely need something this short, you can’t beat this antenna. I’d buy another one if I needed it.

I bought this antenna to replace the mag mount Little Wil which had sat on my Suburban's roof for a couple of years (it was supposed to be temporary). I chose this antenna because it looks very similar to the Larsen NMO2/70B ham antenna I had already installed on the driver's side of the hood, and I wanted to mount the RoadPro in a symmetrical fashion on the passenger side. I installed it on a Firestik SS-174 stainless steel hood channel bracket and connected it to my CB radio via a Firestik K-8R18 coax cable (with Fire-Ring connector). I cut the cable to length and soldered on the included connector. It was all a very simple, straightforward process.Out of the box, the antenna was way out of tune; my meter showed 2.5 SWR on channel 1 and 3.4 SWR on channel 40. Not to worry, since tuning this antenna could not be easier--you simply loosen the two chrome rings at the base of the antenna, twist them up or down the shaft as needed, then re-snug them. It took me a few times adjusting them, but eventually I got it down to 1.1 SWR across the board (checked on channels 1, 20 and 40).Looks great, very easy to tune, and offers little wind resistance. What's not to love? This antenna is a fantastic value.

Out of the box, the antenna exhibited SWR between 2.5 and 3.5 across the U.S. CB - clearly unacceptable. Using an antenna analyzer, I found that it had the lowest SWR (and impedance closest to 50 Ohm) near 25.6 MHz - which translates into ~11.7m wavelength. The U.S. Citizens band is between 26.965 and 27.405 MHz, close to 11.0 m average. The instructions suggested tuning using two aluminum knurled nuts on the plastic base of antenna - moving these nuts all the way to the top brought the SWR minimum barely to 26 MHz. I had to cut more than an inch off both ends of the antenna's steel whip (both above and below the loading coil).This mis-classification is applicable to many other Amazon offerings labelled as "CB antenna," Browning units come to mind as well. For whatever it's worth, a Firestik antenna landed SWR between 1.0 and 1.3 across the entire band without any tuning.Now I hope my freshly-tuned antenna is reliable mechanically (plastic base does not fall apart with age and use).Update - after many attempts to achieve reasonable SWR in CB band, the antenna goes into the garbage.

So was little 50/50 on it when I bought but now that I have it I'll say for a budget antenna with a shorter length it's bang for the buck. Mounted on an nmo to cb antenna adapter. Tuned it with an swr meter which the process was super easy just adjust the rings up or down to dial it in. Was able to get about 1.2 on the swr which is more than Exceptable in my book for a low wattage cb. For what it is 10 out of 10 for functionality just don't plan on the greatest look on build quality we will see how well it does in the long run.