VSWR doesn't matter? But how about "mismatch loss"?

I guess I should have added a smiley face.

 

Close but no cigar. The (now often automatic) antenna tuner is used to
transform the native impedance to the transmitter to match the conjugate
transformed impedance of the antenna at the transmitter end of the
transmission line. The effective result is that the incident energy
arriving at the antenna "sees" a matched load and goes out to free space
instead of bouncing off the transmission line to antenna interface.
This is also why better antennas have reasonable (not far off matching
impedance) characteristic impedances; they do not require matching networks
physically placed at the antenna itself.

 

Now that is a "real" ham radio antenna system, screwampus but it provably
works, and is repeatable (by others).

 

Heartily agreed.