Update: bought a new antenna (firestik tunable tip) on a hunch that maybe tue antenna was bad, and wow, SWR went from 10 to 2-2.5 after some adjustment. Still not great, but now it works and I have a good starting point to move on to fine adjustments. Thanks for the advice guys.

 

yup, Firestiks definitely have to be tuned. Glad you solved you problem.

As far as cb radio techs in LA, they are far and few. There used to be a guy named Toker in the San Fernando Valley on channel 12. Don't know if he's around anymore though.