Advise on home-brew Sat antenna

[DCFD05]

I am looking in to building me a 2m/440 yagi Sat antenna I have the plans Lengths, spacing and so on but what i'm not sure about is all the continuity thing. Question 1. can the elements all have continuity between each other through the boom or do I need to use wood and have some type of insulator between the boom and the element if I use a conductive boom?
Question 2. I have been reading and it sounds like the element don't have to be any exact size around so what are the limits on the element I was just looking for something to use for elements today and I found some 1/2" conduit pipe or 1/2" copper pipe (copper is $$$$) but would it work????
I guess I'm trying to under stand just how the antenna work and what I can and can't do and still have a good antenna.

Thanks ahead of time for all your advise.

 

[Moleculo]

Are you using the homebrew cheap yagi plans I posted earlier? If so, those plans are for a non-conductive (insulated) boom and the specified element diameter. You can build a yagi with a conductive boom and just about any diameter element that is practical, but you have to use those facts in your design calculations. Small changes in element diameter won't affect things much, but large changes will. Off the top of my head, I don't remember the calculations for correcting for a conductive boom, but I'm sure I could find it in either the ARRL Antenna book or ARRL handbook.

In the meantime, check out the spreadsheet I attached in this thread:

http://www.worldwidedx.com/useful-ham-links-tools/35901-dl6wu-yagi-calculator-spreadsheet.html

It allows you to specify the design frequency, number of desired elements, element diameter, boom type, and all the other stuff to give you the element lengths and spacing dimensions for your yagi.

Hope that helps Take some pics as you build it and explain the details to us as you go. Show of your work!