Richard Clark wrote:

That was my point about the screwdriver being run as a elevated
vertical dipole.

So why not just use two screwdriver antennas with each antenna being used
as half of the "dipole"? Since Don Johnson was mentioning this being
done in the 90's by apartment dwellers, it's obviously been tried before
and may even work. It likely won't be the most efficient at getting the
most RF out but likely will work.

I note incidentally that homebrew screwdrivers would drastically lower
the cost of this experiment.