Well 'Doc I have my 1/4 wave Marconi setup out back with three 1/4 wave whips as radials at the feed point and in the horizontal plane and it shows pretty good resonance (not perfect because I am using a 50' run of coax and several devices in line) at about 28.000 with 34 ohms of resistance and about 4 ohms or capacitance at 108" long showing about 1.5:1 SWR. So you are pretty close and right on the mark with your advice. IMHO, that is about as good as that one is going to get unless we change the length a little more or maybe add some inducatance at the feed point. A 102" antenna in that setup will show to be much higher in frequecy at resonance. Now I might add some more GP and maybe angle them down a bit and all that might change, but it probably won't exactally be for the better. I know what I have here is technically a better setup than summitit's mobile setup using a 1/4 wave radiator at this point, because I have better control over the effective GP for the antenna to work against. But summitit, that is not to say you have a sorry setup, that is just the way I see it, because I know what my antenna is seeing as a more suitable ground plane and you can't possibly know for sure about yours, since it is on your mobile and is surely not symmeterical as noted by your own description, being on the side of the vehicle I think plus for sure looking at your final report of results after fixing your meter, you are probably in pretty darn good shape if you radiated pattern is not thrown out of kilter too much by loacation.
Regardless of whether summitit gets his meter right or not, whatever SWR he finally gets will depend on exactally what ground plane he is able to get his 102" whip to see and since he cannot see what the antenna sees for a GP then he will no doubt have to take whatever he gets unless he is willing to do some more work. And if he does it right he will likely find that he will be better off, genertating more real RF if the visibal match is more in line with your suggestion of 1.5 SWR than any results near 1.0:1.
It is my experience with this one, that if you get the SWR looking better than it probably should, and 'Doc you are correct on that point, then you just have added losses to the match that seems to bring the mess into balance at the feed point and you have technically lost some effective output power. Maybe that does not make a hootin' bit of difference at this level in real results, but it is worth noting this system, if showing 1.0:1 SWR, was thought to have been improved, but only by the addition of some loss at the feed point and this was as a result of how ineffective of a ground plane was present for the radiator to work against.
A 102" long radiator is not likely going to be resonant in the middle of 11 meters for the same reasons. In fact it might not even be resonant in 11 meters if it is a 110" inches long, but whatever it works out to be, about 102" to 108" is good enough to work in 11 meters, even if you have a perfect match of 1.01:1 instead of what it should be, at around 1.5 SWR on your dial.
