just to close out this thread, I spoke with nfcu yesterday. the csr went off line to talk to loans and came back and basically said they consider time with the cu, military status, use of accounts, direct deposit, etc. in determining if they will go north of $ 500 on a cli. in my case the scores were not the issue, it was 1 or more of these kind of issues or so they said. I will keep the membership, checking, cc and cloc in place and walk away and not invest more time into this, its a dead end but I don't see any harm in keeping the $ 500 cloc open at this point. waste of a hp, could be worse...such is life
On one of the two docs that were sent to me it stated my score, 787/818 and credit is not granted based on terms/type requested