I spent a lot of time learning about and trying to build suitable VHF & UHF antennas, but without something like the Bird antenna analyzer that I was able to borrow it would have been impossible or, at least, taken an impossible amount of time.

This is the gamma match on one of many antenna designs attempted. The dipole is 3/16" diameter aluminum rod.

But, except for the folded dipole antenna design which was used, other half-wave dipole antenna designs & methods to match 50 ohm feed line to them that were tried, all required critical adjustment & were very sensitive to anything nearby.

I quickly learned that a half-wave folded dipole antenna was the way to go as it was affected the least by nearby objects, it required no tuning other then having to be made the correct length plus it was the easiest and lightest in weight to build.

The folded dipole antenna was built from 300 ohm TV twin-lead feed-line sandwiched between two 3/16" x 3/8" balsa wood strips and wrapped with 2 layers of 0.6 oz fibreglass cloth embedded in epoxy resin.

A 4-to-1 balun from a TV mini-match was then attached which matched the 200 ohm folded dipole antenna to the RG-174 50 ohm coax feed line used.

The balun was embedded in epoxy to keep it firmly in place on the dipole assembly. To fully protect the balun and its fragile connections, this area was then slowly built up by repeatedly applying strips of fibreglass cloth and epoxy until everything became a solid integral part of the antenna assembly.

The completed antennas provided a perfect 1:1 match at the designed frequencies which increased to 2:1 with the antenna laid flat on the earth.