funny you bring up pads cause I believe this to be part of the probelm, I'm just tired of buying things and than not use them because it didn't give me the results I wanted. when I purchased the pads at my local auto paint supplier I asked for white polishing pads. when I finished above process I cleaned my pads and saw that on the back they were listed as a white finishing pad and the soft polish was to be blue. so back to buy more supplies. when I did it with the blue pad it was worse (more like a very slight compound haze) even moving that pad to #9 didn't give me as good of results as the white. when I use the white with #9 it turns out great. am I not using the blue with #9 enough? I do have a pc now, waiting for pads from megs.
I can also mark this as another leason learned........could you imagen the horror if I had white compound pads and didn't check the back. I'll always double check and know what I'm buying from here on out.