Thanks for the tips and info! I have just enough room for a dipole covering 24MHz at max. Which I currently use for SWL'ing. Mounted outdoors, about 3 meters in height and 3.1 meters in total length. I can mount a whip for CB on the tower in the center of my backyard and ground it with a copper pipe in the soil. That's all I currently have as building base.
Kind regards,
Telegrapher.
How tall is the tower in the center of your backyard? The tower needs to be strong enough to hold the weight of the antenna (which can be considerable), plus wind load. If its often windy where you live that's something to consider. Lots of good information online about base station CB antenna installation.
Indoor CB dipoles will work, but not nearly as well as an outdoor antenna. Pigmeat makes an excellent point - a magnetic mount mobile CB antenna with a ground plane will work, provided the ground plane is big enough. Think of a mobile CB antenna installation. The antenna itself is one half of the antenna, the metal frame of the car's body is the other half (the ground plane). At CB frequencies, 26-28 MHz, you need a significant amount of metal. Or, you could use the ground plane (counterpoise) that comes with the vertical antenna you end up getting.
Grounding an antenna and having a counterpoise are two different things. Grounding is part of safe practice and lightning protection. The counterpoise is the "other half" of the antenna and most vertical antennas have provisions for counterpoise (often called a "ground plane") as part of the antenna itself. Regardless of which vertical antenna you pick, you'll want to check the SWR on the channel(s) you intend to use most often.
Hopefully this information will be helpful. You'll be impressed with the range that a simple base station CB radio with a good antenna is capable of. When it comes to talking to locals (and talking long distance, or "DX")
the higher up your antenna is, the better. The frequency band that CB operates on provides excellent local communications characteristics, especially with proper antennas mounted above obstructions. 27 MHz follows the line of sight principle (and then a little bit after that) for local communications, and a 5/8 wave will point your signal towards the horizon for quality local communications and good DX performance when the band is open.
When you do install your antenna, regardless of the type, avoid power lines and do not install the antenna in a location where if it were to be blown over it would touch power lines. More than a few houses have burned down because a CB radio operator put their antenna next to a power line.