My location is also mountainous, so I know what you mean about the rods.  Here are some ideas:

Buy some flex aluminum conduit, 3/4 dia (10ft is fine).  Route your coax (now buried) in the conduit.  Connect the end of the conduit near your house to a 1/2 or 5/8" copper-plated ground rod (drive in as far as you can, then cut off with hacksaw).  Use a conduit fitting to make connection the conduit, and a bronze clamp-on connector on the ground rod (sold with ground rods).

Rebury the conduit/coax.  Connect some heavy bare wire (stranded #0 is real good, #2 is pretty good, #4 is adequate) to the rod, using the same bronze clamp-on connector.  Make this wire about 20 ft or so, extending about 10 feet each side of the ground rod.  Install at least one more ground rod on each end of this wire, driving as deep as you can.  You can use parts of the first rod that you cut off.  Use same type bronze clamps.  Even better if you can add a couple of additional rods at the 5ft points along the wire.  If you can't go much past 1 1/2 ft or so, a couple of 8ft rods will be all you need in total.

To explain the above, the conduit acts as a bazooka, and couples any surge on the coax to ground.  The ground consists of several short (longer the better) ground rods, separated by several feet to disperse any charge.

It would also be a good idea to cut your coax either at the bottom of your tower, or just before going into your house.  Install connectors and a junction, and connect the junction to the ground.  Tape up to keep out water.

Mostly what you are trying to do is provide muliple ways for the strike to go to ground (the conduit, the ground wires, the several short ground rods).
 

Nice post.   One of the nice things about ham radio is the long tradition of hams helping hams.  WHen I was a snot-nosed kid (SNK), some OF's helped get me going.  If I can now return the favor, to an even older OF, or a snot-nosed kid, so much the better.  I don't think the original poster was implying that the type of help involved stuff like digging a 6ft deep hole for a tower, etc.  I would hate to think that very many hams have Bill's attitude.

Lots of schematics in handbooks, etc, especially older books.  If you are referring to tubes, the classic 6AG7 to 6L6 and many variations upon that.  Best bet would be a handbook from 25 or more years ago.  John.

Another source (less expensive) is Mouser.com, they have a number of high to low Z coupling transformers, page 663 of their on-line catalog.  One for example is
42TL017, a 20K to 600 ohm coupling at $1.84.  A friend used this transformer for the same purpose as you.  Worked fine.  Mouser also has some others that you can look at.   John.

Thanks, Tom and Steve for your comments!  Very helpful.  JOhn.

As addendum to above, how about Yaesu YO-100, etc?

I have a KWM2A and 30L1, and am interested in running cleanest signal I can.  Quite a few SB-614's are available.  Not being familiar with this unit, can it work with the KWM2?  What connections are made to the 614?  Thanks.  John

Picking up on Chuck's comment, I would like a "boatanchor" category with rig being at least 25 ys old (or 30).  Then my KWM2 would qualify.   John.

I agree.  Exciter power would easily be handled by RG58, and coax loss in 3 ft is near zippo.

You have probably noticed, if in your car and tuned to a weaker AM station, that passing underneath a power line causes a distinct drop in signal strength.  I would guess that a similar situation arises with your dipole under the grounded rod.  Doesn't sound like a good situation.  

I agree with above posts that most of your voltage drop is likely due to 120v operation.  Also recommend replacing the caps precautionary (when a cap goes, it really stinks and might expel a corrosive paste inside your amp).

Go to a good source like Mouser.  You will find that the newer caps are much smaller for a given capacity compared with old stuff.  Buy the PC (radial) style with both pins coming out one end.  Place two caps pin to pin (ie lenghtwise) and solder (+ to +), then tape together.  This will make a capacitor about same size as original and much more capacity (probably double).  Connect a couple of hookup leads to the soldered pins.  This will help stiffen your power supply voltage.

Even though you expressed no plans to place an antenna on the roof, a metal roof would make an ideal ground plane.  And being up in the air, your antenna would be a good match for 50 ohms.  So keep in mind the possibility that a multi-band vertical on the roof might be an excellent radiator.

Here is a good overview of baluns and their use.  http://www.qsl.net/iz7ath/web/02_brew/11_balun/pag01_eng.htm

Quite a challenge!  I'm guessing that your 1.5 SWR meter is the one that reads 2.0 when in series with the other meter.  And that other meter which reads infinite by itself is the one that reads almost infinite with the other meter.

If this is true, I will speculate that the 2.0 vs 1.5 and "almost infinite" vs "infinite" is due to a slight movement along the transmission line (due to putting two meters in circuit).  If you actually have a very high SWR on the line, the slightly longer transmission line might account for the small changes.  Thus, like you, I suspect high SWR.

Would seem that your meters are ok if showing 1:1 with dummy load.

If you can temporarily put a resistor across the antenna terminals (anything from 1K to 100K) - then you can check the station end of the coax with an ohmmeter.  If its open (infinite resistance), you have a bad connection somewhere.  If zero ohms, a short, and if value of the resistor, then coax up to antenna is probably ok.

If you can't get to the antenna terminals, at least check coax for a short with ohmmeter.  

Maybe there is a club or other ham near you that has an antenna analyzer.

John  

When you swap SWR meters, are they both placed in the line at exactly the same place?  (ie the length of coax from xmtr to meter is same in both cases, and the length of coax from meter to antenna is exactly same in both cases?)