from a fellow cb'er, you ham's in here are a good crowd. here's my idea that brewed amongst my cranium one day.
i had bought some 50' roll of 5/16" copper tubing, had some left over fence top rail, a 7'3" 1 1/4" piece of square tubing, and a '75 celica axle left over and my idea came together.
the driven element would be 212" with a gamma match that was 1/4" and 27" long with 24"length and a 90* bend with 3". the 3" section was screwed in at a location where the end of the gamma arm hovered above the center of the dipole. the gamma match was finalized by inserting a tight fitting wire of roughly 10 ga. into it until the swr is a match. the gamma arm i'm not sure if it should face up or out but i place mine in relation to where i think the beam's going, so, outward. the reflector i made of 223" up to 226" of 5/16" copper tubing that will be spaced behind the driven element by 7'2"+/- 2-3".
it just so happens that i had a perfect boom for a 2 element cb antenna. 7'2" of 1 1/4" thin sqare steel tubing, that seemed to had already had the holes drilled where they needed to be. kinda like it was meant for it!
gots lots of toprail fence pole, and a coupler. measured out 18ft and what i intended to drive into the ground and drove it next to my window. put my top rail coupler in about 4' off the ground and now i have no need for some expensive antenna rotator!! ofcourse, i mounted it to the side of my home! but how was i gonna get a boom on top of my fence pole? easy, i had an extra '75 celica axle leftover from a repair. 1 half shaft did the trick fitting extremely tight into the fence pole. with a little digging i found some make shift brackets. mounted it between the lug studs and fits good.
if you've ever bought one of those lousy tent-like carports with those 3' section tube poles that hold it up, well, 3 make the support for 1 element and 3 for another. with the right manipulation, i cut a hole on top, drilled a hole through the bottom bolted it to my new found boom, same for the other end, and set my elements in place atop,(insulated from) my homebuilt junk pole and platform, whalah! it seems to work very well, with appropriate tuning as mentioned above with gamma match. though i would recommend going above 1/2 wavelength high or roughly 18ft and above. before i realized that i had this leftover carport tubing i had constructed it with 2x4's supporting the elements, so i am very sure of my constuction techniques/practices are by far, well beyond sufficient, though when hurricane rita decided to blow by us in houston, it was too close to call to wonder if it would have stood, lol! and i willingly and furiosly raced to take it apart.
i've had cb'ers come by my house thinking i couldn't do that or this... if you have the patience, the will to do it, and a thought in your head, you can do it, just try to imagine the junk above. if you really wanted you could get a good ham antenna tuner, and i dont mean the swr box either. a antenna tuner and a fence can make an antenna, but may suffer some efficiency loss, i'd suspect. best easy reference is the arrl's handbook for the radio amateur. i think it's the best! good luck
73's from houston, tx
couch potatoe ch.19 27.185mHz
1600 ch.38 lsb 27.385mHz