Radio reception issue

[dbemowsk]

So,, I built myself a new controller for my garage door. The original one I had based on an old cell phone charger for power and it was built on an older less reliable breadboard that I was using when I started on MySensors. The new controller uses a power supply module similar to the HLK power modules that people have used on here, and one of the easy newbie PC boards from OpenHardware IO. The radio I am using is an NRF24L01+PA+LNA with a pigtail antenna extension that I have wired to the outer case of the garage door opener with an external antenna. I have run a few tests and the controller works well. The problem I have is that when I put the outer metal case of the opener back on, the node stops communicating with the gateway. When I try to send a switch command in Domoticz to open or close the door, I get a message that it could not send the switch command. The whole reason for me using the NRF24L01+PA+LNA radio was so that I could have the external antenna to prevent that problem. Does anyone have any suggestions on what I can try?

Here is a pic of what things look like.

[flopp]

Try to angle the antenna in different directions
try with another nRF
try to have the nRF outside the box when you close it