So that’s a lot of fancy cb talk for a noob like myself. What do you suggest I try to do to remedy my situation? I’ve tried understanding this ground plane concept but I’m not getting it.
If your match is good at band center, but bad at the band edges then I would suggest just getting a longer Firestik. If it is bad everywhere then you are probably looking at a combination of grounding, placement, proximity effects, etc.
BTW, just because an antenna is tuned to resonance, it is not necessarily 50 Ohms. A quarter wave antenna on a perfect ground plane will be around 35 Ohms at resonance which will yield a VSWR of 1.5:1. However, I believe that antennas like Firestiks are designed to be near 50 Ohms at resonance using a combination of non-linearly wound inductors or other magic tricks.