Update:
I took off the electrical tape that was covering the antenna connection wires and found that the previous owner had used the metal shielding as a ground wire. I don't know much about this kind of stuff, but that doesn't seem right
Spanky, you can see the plastic washers in the attached pics. I believe those are in the right place as they're preventing the bolt holding the antenna from touching ground.
Based on this, do you guys think I need to buy a coax with a ground cable built-in? I did buy an SWR meter and on Channel 1 it was 1.5 and Channel 40 it was 2. I didn't try and tune the antenna though, I want to at least be able to receive/transmit before I mess with that. One problem at a time...
