It's the counterpoise!!
I built up another MV, this time using a wooden dowel rod for the coil form and 20 AWG wire. As per the norm, it resonated too low ini frequency. I trimmed off about 2" of the resonator and removed 4 turns of the coil. This brought the antenna to a center frequency of 7.20 MHz with a 1.4:1 VSWR. Not too bad.
I remembered reading somewhere that the counterpoise should be as straight as possible. Remembering back on my last attempt of tuning the antenna, I did get a good match and the counterpoise WAS pretty straight. I stretched the counterpoise as straight as I could and built up an extension cable to get back to the antenna switch. That's what was needed! The VSWR is now 1.2:1 and I have a little over 100 KHz of 1.5:1 bandwidth!
The down side........I place the antenna between the 'V' of my 17M wire. That antenna has been goofy ever since I put it up and now, the VSWR is terrible on it. I guess it's time to move on to another band and build a 17M MicroVert!
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