yep its an end of the semester project. BUT, we never learned anything
about impedance matching, so I feel no shame in asking people like
yourself. Thanks for your help.

I'm at home now, and from what I can tell, I can get a good reactive
match by changing the length of the wire from the ground plane to the
connector? (while keeping the wire from the helix to the connector
constant? I think I will try this.

The real part I'm not too worried about.