Just an idea, maybe I am just thinking out loud.
Do a simple little check.
Get a long piece of pipe or 40' of tower and put ground radials under the tower and cut the coax so it is 2 wavelengths long - electrically and then turn the power on your radio - ham or CB down to it's lowest setting and check the SWR again with a real SWR meter or a Bird Meter.
In the world of antenna's there is two kinds of antenna's, the kind that works and the kind that doesn't!
The Q of the antenna determines if the antenna is broadband or if it is a high Q antenna - it will only be resonant on one frequency and not resonant everywhere else.
A high Q antenna is very efficient, while a low Q antenna throws away most of the power put to it, or at least it doesn't transmit your signal as well.
The key is to get a different antenna, put it up at the same height, do a side by side comparison within one half of one hour of each other and see which one transmits the best. My guess is that if it is so broad banded it is either because the coax is lying to you - making a reading that the swr meter likes, or that the antenna is effectively a dummy load.
A Ringo Ranger has a high Q. I once spent two days adding and subtracting aluminum from a Ringo Ranger until I got it to operate on 11m.
It ended up being 1.6 to 1.4 to 1 everywhere from channel 1 to channel 40 @ 16.5 feet long..
That was the best that I could get out of it. If I got it low on channel 19, the SWR would be about 2.5 on channel 1 or channel 40 - just too much disparity in frequency for it to operate well everywhere.
Rule of thumb, just because the SWR meter says it is ok, doesn't mean that it is resonant!!
Put your antenna up higher 36' off the ground minimum, put a dozen ground radials beneath the antenna - at least 9' long copper wire, throw all the old crappy coax away, buy Belden 9913 or LMR 400, turn your power down to 5 watts or less and then come back and tell us what kind of SWR it has.
