So the antenna works pretty damn good. The whole setup is located in Fairfax, VA at my parents house. I've also switched from emailing the file to FTPing and bumped the bitrate up too. A lightning bolt struck near the antennas and blew some stuff up. The printer port is used to control everything and takes the brunt of a surge.
Powerful surges can jump the traces in the wiring or be induced in the conductors.
This circuit consists of a transistor driving a RF relay and is probably the weakest link because the relay is powered from the PC's power supply. The transistor has shorted twice before. With this rebuild of the circuit, I brute forced it. I now have a transistor driving another relay which then drives the RF relay. I did make the new circuit external with connectors, so if it blows again it'll be easy to replace.