so ive been going back and forth on this for a while now and i cant really make up my mind. currently running a 40m dipole at about 25 feet which i know isnt ideal, its not a half wavelength up or anything close to it, but its what i can do with my yard situation. been getting okay results into europe from the midwest but low angle stuff is obviously suffering.

a buddy of mine keeps telling me to just put up a vertical with a decent radial field and call it a day for dx. he's using a hustler 6BTV and swears by it. but ive also read a million times that a dipole even at low heights often outperforms a vertical because of ground losses with verticals unless you really go all out with the radials. like 60+ radials worth of copper.

so what are you guys actually running on 40 and what do you find works better for working dx specifically, not ragchewing locally because i can do that on a wet string basically

honestly the "dipole vs vertical" debate has been beaten to death but here's my take from actually running both for a few years. at 25 feet your dipole is going to have a fairly high radiation angle, probably somewhere in the 45-60 degree range depending on ground conductivity under it. that's great for regional stuff, not so great for long haul. a vertical with a good radial system absolutely will beat a low dipole for dx on 40, thats just physics.

but here's the thing about the 6BTV your buddy has — those traps are lossy and if he hasnt done the capacitor hat mod on the 40m section the efficiency is kind of meh. a purpose built 40m vertical with even 32 or so quarter wave radials will smoke it. i ran a simple 33 foot vertical with about 30 radials on 40 for a couple years before i got the space for a beam and worked all continents pretty easily. the key really is the radials, dont cheap out on that part.

yeah what he said about radials is right but also dont underestimate just raising the dipole if thats an option at all. even getting to 35 or 40 feet makes a noticeable difference. i went from 30 to about 45 feet on mine and the dx rate on 40 improved pretty noticeably. not saying skip the vertical idea just that sometimes the easier path is just getting more height on what you already have