You Damn Nerds
OK, I made one too. It's a 9-element from K7MEM's design specs (it's supposed to be an 11-element, but I wanted to keep the boom length to +/- 48"). I used the DL6WU spacing.
It's made from 3/4" PVC (painted gloss gray) and 1/8" aluminum rod. Elements were secured to the boom (through the boom) with silicon caulk, then coated over with PVC cement.
Employed a hairpin driven element and used some stainless clamps and #10 hardware to connect the coax. SWR is pretty decent @ 1.2:1. It appears to be resonant at quite a few other freqs in the 440 band too, including some ATV freqs
I'm using it as an RX antenna to the ICOM receiver, 15' above ground, haphazardly aimed at the K9KOA repeater.
Quick check: signal strength went up from a nominal 5 up to 9 (not sure I even have it aimed correctly yet, and how the atmospheric conditions are today ... will do more aiming and testing over the next few days)
It's not very pretty, but it appears to be working. Going to build some more in the future, but with square aluminum booms and larger diameter elements.
Thanks for the technical help guys