That is SWR, its a measure of how much energy going down the coax is coming back. If its good, none. The main reason here for the swr meter is to see if that matching network you were talking about is so bad its screwing you over. One thing besides not hearing any one is that if it has a high swr, that equates to heat on the finals in your radio. Companies can over build stuff to survive some heat, but if its so bad your receive is tanked? I think you get the idea.
Give you an idea of what I deal with so you can see how much it matters. I’m working on receiving weather related information such as fax’s of weather charts, sat images and radio teletype. They transmit these on extremely differing HF freq so just one antenna cut to some freq isn’t going to do very well. I guarntee you the SWR on the other freqs is higher than a cats back in front of the junk yard dog. But I can make whats called a tuner so that the radio likes the antenna’s looks, and has a very low SWR. Now this diffenence will make the signal you receive go from a very nice,quite, no noise, no one there to a blasting, break your ear drums, wish the guy would shut up kind of signal. So, that thing you put in line to so you could use two radios on one antenna is kind of like that tuner with a kick.
I’m betting your radio is nice and quiet. I don’t remember what freq they use on the marine radio’s, but you have to have a SWR meter that is good for that range to check it. The one the guy down the blocks uses on his trucks CB likely won’t work. I would guess who ever sold you it should have one. One of the sensors for the one I have goes from 140mhz to 450mhz. Else look for a friend whose a ham with VHF equipement. Oh, you may have to by an adapter if the sensor doesn’t have the same connector. Do they use PL 259’s?
Other wise save yourself trouble and return it.
WarrenMN
