heya folks....

got a general questions about antennas. please excuse my ignorance but i am
new to this hobby. when we were kids my dad had a small base station set up
to an antron 100 antenna and i remember being able to talk to school friends
whose fathers had base stations miles and miles across town. i recently
inherited this exact same antenna, set it up, and it does not seem to be
able to pull in anything over about a mile. can an antenna go "out of tune"
so to speak? i hooked up my cheapo radio shack whip to the same rig and it
worked wayyyyy better. any advice? thanks in advance!