Made big headway today with my new setup. I had only made one contact so far and was getting frustrated. The SWR meter on my 817 showed nothing so I assumed everything was tuned correctly. I finally hooked up my old Micronta 21-525B gifted to me by K1LQH, and found my SWR on CW was 3:1! I shortened the whip about 12″ and immediately was copied 5-9 by a station in CT and another in MD!