An hour of experimenting with YOUR antenna at YOUR station trumps several days' discussion on an Internet forum.  Get it on the air and see if it's a waste of time (by your own standards) or not.

The Simpson 260 and similar VOMs are rated 20Kohms per volt for DC VOLTS.  On AC VOLTS, it's 5K.

And yeah, nothing beats analog for tuning for peaks or nulls.

Don't paint the insulators...if you get paint on there, wipe it off completely.

Here's a link to Chapter 3 of the International Code of Signals.  As BJM said, these are not radio signals.  A (typical) Radioman wouldn't know what they mean.  Quartermasters would likely use the ICoS regularly these days; more so in earlier years.

http://msi.nga.mil/MSISiteContent/StaticFiles/NAV_PUBS/ICOS/Chapter3.pdf

E = IR

E = MC²

Therefore, IR = MC².   

Sounds like an experiment is in the works.  I believe you'll find that the various pieces of siding are not electrically bonded to one another, and this is likely to be a necessary step.

As in "Also Sprach ....."?  I better get the timpani ready; that's fun to play!

Concrete generally means rebar, and with the structure including metal besides the rebar, you might as well be in a Faraday Cage as far as HF is concerned.  Lotsa luck!

"Nietzsche" amplifiers?  Deep philosophical discussions on 75 meter AM was the first thing that came to mind!

"Nietzsche is pietzsche", according to some... 

Make two identical antennas.

Put one of them up, connect it, and feed power to it.  Raise the power level until the antenna or feedline melts.  Measure the power constantly until meltage occurs.

Take down the remains of the first antenna/feedline and put the other one up.  Never apply as much power to this one as to the first one.

(HINT:  If you reach 1.5KW and nothing's going wrong, you should stop at that point). Does not apply on some bands.  Void where prohibited by law.  Some restrictions apply.  See store for details.

Did you have the noise problem before?  Do you have/can you borrow another radio (maybe an HT) just to see if it, too, has noise?

If both radios have the same noise, you're going to have to look around your house to find the source.  There are a lot of things these days that produce some pretty severe noise.

And by the way, to answer your question about testing coax and connectors, use a multimeter to check for continuity between center and shield with both ends of the coax disconnected.  (There should be an open circuit.)  Wiggle the connectors around while watching the meter and see if there's intermittent continuity.  Apparently, you found the faulty one by ... ESP?! 

Peter -

One word:  experiment.  In the time it takes to ask a question on a forum and get an answer, you could get an antenna up and on the air.  Then you could change the angle of the vee and see how those changes affect the way it loads, directivity, signal strengths and so forth. 

Antennas are antennas, not consensuses (consensuae?).

Reminds me of a QST article from the early 60s.  Written by John Troster, W6ISQ (SK), it was a tongue-in-cheek look at "California Kilowatts".

One of the comments allegedly overheard on 75 meters was about the Collins KWS-1:  "It sure makes a dandy exciter for my amplifier!"

Another paragraph noted that a true California Kilowatt station uses silver dollars for key contacts...

Man!  Talk about "LDEs"!

Start with, say, four radials.  See how it works on each band, check SWR bandwidth, etc.  Then increase the number of radials by a few and see what changed, how much, in what direction, etc.  Keep notes!!

It's called "experimentation".  Results WILL differ from one installation to another even though they "should" be "identical".  See what works and what doesn't.