so ive been going back and forth on this for probably two months now and im just gonna ask. i have a pretty typical suburban lot, maybe 60 feet usable in the backyard before i hit the fence. the house is on one side, neighbors garage on the other. right now i have a temporary end fed wire just draped over a tree branch and its honestly been working better than i expected but i want to put something real up.

the plan was a 40m dipole in an inverted V off a 30ft mast in the middle of the yard, feed it with coax and call it a day. but then i started reading about verticals and now im second guessing everything. the lot isnt big enough for good radials on a vertical anyway i dont think, and i cant get a dipole at a real half wave height obviously, so im not sure which compromise is better. mostly interested in domestic ssb, maybe some casual DX if conditions let me. anyone been in a similar situation and figured out which way to go

the inverted V is probably your best bet for that lot size honestly. yeah 30 feet isnt ideal for 40m but an inverted V at that height is going to outperform a vertical with a mediocre radial system almost every time, especially for domestic stuff. the low angle radiation people love about verticals only really shows up when you have a serious ground system under it, and on a small suburban lot thats just not happening unless you want to spend a weekend laying out 32 radials and your neighbors are cool with that.

i ran an inverted V at about 28 feet for a few years on 40 and worked plenty of stateside stations, even managed a few EU contacts during good openings. the apex angle matters more than people think — try to keep it above 90 degrees if you can, so dont pull the ends down too steeply. and if you can slope it slightly off-center to fit the yard that usually doesnt hurt much. just make sure your coax has a decent choke balun at the feedpoint or youll have rf on the shield and wonder why your audio sounds weird on certain bands.

had almost the exact same situation a couple years ago, went with the inverted V and dont regret it. one thing though — if you ever want to try 80m, cut the dipole for 40 and then just add a loading coil or use a tuner for 80, works surprisingly decent. i use mine on 4 bands with a tuner and the inverted V shape actually helps it load up on the other bands reasonably well. not optimal but like you said everything is a compromise anyway