swr doesn't affect reception. i would take it to Dean at the road king and have him look at it. at least then you are able to repair/replace anything bad.
Thanks Al, maybe I can sneak over there tonight if they're open and have him take a look.
I did a quick search online, and the radio I have is the
Midland 1001z.
It was er...."working" on the 101 course. We did testing, and couldn't get it to work right, but then when we hit the trials I tried it out and it was fine.
After the show and shine, Johnny said he could hear me, but I couldn't hear him...after finding the manual online and reading it, I learned that the RF gain should be at max most of the time....and I had it turned down to zero.
I pulled the unit when I pulled all the carpets for vacuuming (previous owner had a dog) and cleaned out everything. I reinstalled it before we went to fix fences in September, and re did the power / ground cables. It turns on, and seems to be fine, but hasn't picked up or sent a signal since.
I'm wondering now, reading on the Stu-Offroad site: "...applying a ground to the antenna will cause infinite SWR and the possibility of a burned out RF power amplifier transistor in your radio."
There's a decent chance my whip antenna may have been pushed into my roof rack front-bar mount at some point (part of which isn't painted), which grounded it, and could have caused damage.