so ive been going back and forth on this for a couple weeks now and i think im just confusing myself at this point. currently have a 40m dipole up about 25 feet, fed with coax, nothing fancy. it works okay but i feel like im missing contacts especially to the west coast, im in ohio so that's like a 2000 mile shot or whatever.

a guy at the club keeps telling me to put up a vertical with radials and itll dramatically improve my low angle radiation for dx. which makes sense on paper. but ive also read that a dipole at low heights actually has a pretty high takeoff angle so maybe thats my problem more than the antenna type itself. if i could get it to 50 feet would that be worth more than switching to a vertical at ground level with a decent radial field.

i dont have a ton of space for radials anyway, yard is maybe 60x80 feet. just trying to figure out what the smart move is here before i spend money or time on something that wont actually help.

25 feet on 40m is pretty low yeah, you're basically getting a cloud warmer at that height. the takeoff angle is going to be somewhere north of 60 degrees which is fine for regional stuff but not great for working across the country. raising it would definitely help more than you'd expect, even getting to 35 or 40 feet makes a noticeable difference on the pattern.

the vertical argument is real but your radial situation is the limiting factor there. a vertical with a skimpy radial field is going to have ground loss eating into your efficiency and you might not end up ahead of where you are now. ive seen people put up a vertical thinking itll solve everything and then wonder why its not performing. if you can lay down 16 to 32 radials at least a quarter wave long then yeah its worth considering, but with 60x80 feet you're going to be trimming those pretty short on 40m.

honestly id try to get the dipole higher first, its free if you already have the wire and coax. borrow a cheap antenna modeling program like EZNEC or even the free version of 4nec2 and plug in your actual height, it'll show you exactly what the pattern looks like and what you gain by going up 10 or 15 more feet.

im in a similar boat, got a dipole on 40 at about 30 feet and the west coast is always a struggle from the midwest. what helped me more than anything was just getting on the band at the right time honestly, like the greyline stuff is real. but antenna wise i did put up an inverted-v configuration and i think the lower angle helped slightly, or maybe i just got lucky who knows.

one thing i did read somewhere is that a fan dipole or adding a loading coil to tilt it more broadside toward where you want to work can help, not sure how practical that is in your yard though.