OK lmao I finally got it worked out. Get this...

I thought I would like to have a chat for Ancient History, so after trying a hundred times to find a server (none of which Trillian would connect to) I stumbled upon BrokenIRC and thought it would be funny if "BrokenIRC" was the only one that wasn't "broken" so I tried it. What do you know, it works. Isn't irony grand? So I join the help channel, get some great help from an admin there in setting up my channel step by step. I had some problems with figuring out the different commands on Trillian, but I got the hang of it.

I get offline to get some lunch, get back online, and I can't get my Ops (I have no control over my own channel in other words)

I DL mIRC but it turns out its only free for 30 days, no good. So I try IceChat which won't connect to my server. I try Visual IRC which keeps freezing and after two restarts I finally get connected-with the same problem as Trillian.

I reconnect and try identifying with nickserv THEN joining the channel and voila! I am operator again! Then I think hey, wait a minute! I go back to Trillian and try the same thing and what do you know, I just wasted an hour trying to fix something that wasn't broke! I feel so stupid...

The channel is working well now. And it does indeed work with Trillian. My only regret is I couldn't get a Centurion bot (I have Guard bot instead)

I posted the channel info on the forum but here it is again:

Server: BrokenIRC irc.brokenirc.net

Channel: #AncientHistory