[Mobile-Portable] Iron Horse 40m Ground?

[Jay Eimer]

Okay, here's one for y'all.

A friend of mine (KE5UL, Bill Lund) has a Jeep Cherokee and a 706MkII-G.

He picked up an Iron Horse 40m single band whip.

The mount is a "side-mount" (metal bar with two holes - one at either end)
that goes under the ball of a receiver hitch.  The other hole has a pass
through with 3/8x24 socket on the top (matches the whip) and an SO-239 on
the bottom.

We passed the coax out the hatch and hooked it up to the bottom.  On top we
put on a large spring (something he had - it's old) that was a 3/8" stud on
one end and 3/8" socket on the other and then the whip.

NOTHING.

So I got out the antenna analyzer, and the needle was swinging all over
everywhere - seemed to be when the antenna was moving.  Of course, these are
pretty flexible, with 4' or so of "stinger", so it's always moving, even
when the Jeep is parked.  SWR would go from 2.5 to infinity and back, about
once per second.  Steadying the antenna helped, and we appeared to get it to
tune, and it hears pretty good.  But no one answers us.  We got one contact
who reported us "very weak", 2x2.  But as it stands now, there's no way this
antenna is going to work as it stands.

Tried another antenna and all is fine.  It's just this one.  Since the
analyzer wouldn't steady, I suspected a bad connection, most likely with the
spring.  But I thought I'd ask here first, in case anyone else had
encountered similar problems.  Is this inherent in the Iron Horse antennas?

Thanks,

Jay
AD5PE