If everything is right it should be much better than that Shayne, even a cheap rig/twig should get line of sight for a mile or more if it's set up correctly, you can tune a piece of wire and get better than that so I doubt it's the quality of the twig tbh.
clearly something ain't right, but it's not really fixable via the forum.
Is there an amature radio club near you? They're usually very helpful if you could get in touch and go to one of their club nights or something.
Failing that, check all the plugs are soldered correctly not just shoved/screwed on, check continuity of the plugs and cable, check the earth on the twig is good, clean up the Earth contact for the twig - scrape any paint/rust/dirt off underneath and use copper slip on it, recheck SWR and fine tune it, check the rig is set to the same frequencies as Chas.