What am I doing wrong?

[222DBFL]

Yep. You would be better off building yourself either a vertical, inverted V, or horizontal dipole for what you are trying to accomplish. If you were to use the existing painter pole you have and run a piece of wire down it and use an SO239 and a 1:1 balun or a piece of 75ohm coax for a matching stub, you could have a better vertical antenna.
If you have any trees in your yard, you can hang a dipole up between 2 of them. An inverted V or horizontal dipole would work well for DX'ing and locally out to about 3-5 miles. It doesn't have to be very high off the ground. 18ft or more is optimal, but I have seen them as low as 9ft and work well. There are tons of videos and also antenna calculators on either the App Store or android play store for the antenna calculators for the needed lengths of wire. Also Google 11 meter dipoles and you will see that there is a ton of info on this subject that will help you as well. That or you could build a vertical antenna with 4 102" whips and a 4-6" spring for the vertical whip. The other 3 will be used as ground planes or counterpoise. Like I said, Google is your friend and holds vast info on this subject. But I have to agree with the others here. The setup you have currently isn't going to work very well. Mediocre at best. But that is JMHO. The cheapest route is to build a dipole IMO. You can use wire or even a piece of coax. And you'll need some 75 ohm coax or a 1:1 matching balun to get the impedance to 50 ohms. Also eBay sells dipoles anywhere from $15-$45 dollars. Anyone of them will work. Just have to use your imagination sometimes. Again, these are JMHO's. Hope they might give you some food for thought and possibly some direction. Good luck and keep us posted as to what you end up doing. And we are here to help as always. It might take a few days for someone to answer, but there are many knowledgeable gents here that will help!! Again, good luck and be safe. Have a good day.