Well depending where you added the spring you may have detuned the antenna. Unless it is a 1/2 wave antenna you'll need some type of ground plane and guessing your roof is fiberglass it maybe necessary to add radials or some type of ground plane. Years ago a friend got me on the roof of his RV to show me some thing on his roof it was a 10" saw blade stuck to the roof and aluminum tape in a 6'X6' cross the antenna was long gone but the ground plane was still there. Repeater antennas have a pretty fair amount of gain and are usually sitting on a hill to begin with (the line of sight thing). All though your antenna reads 2:1 that does not necessarily mean it will radiate well a dummy load is a perfect match but is a very poor antenna.
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