"Earth Ground--Is This Right?" Nope. What you need to do is get a loooong connect wire and on a bright night shoot that rod from a gun that is being fired from a cannon that is being launched from a catapult and establish a good old fashioned MOON GROUND....It'll take some practice to hit the moon, and the wire constantly moving/tangling across the globe gets annoying, but once your rod is planted in the moon you will get ALL the stations.
Seriously though, nice work on that ground rod. Even when I had a long wire I never got round to making a ground. I want to put up a long wire, but we have had a tree leaning on the one I want to anchor the antenna on, and it don't look like a darn thing is going to be done about it for some time....