so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i finally decided to stop using the whip on my HT and build something real. picked up some 14 gauge stranded wire from the hardware store and im putting together a simple half wave dipole for 40m. cut each leg to about 33.5 feet which is what the formula spat out, 468 divided by freq and then halved.

my question is really about the feedpoint. i bought a SO-239 chassis connector and i was going to just solder the two wire ends directly to it, center pin on one leg and the shell on the other. is that all there is to it mechanically speaking? like do i need any kind of strain relief or is just soldering it solid enough? im hanging this between two trees in the backyard so theres gonna be some wind load and i dont want the solder joints pulling apart after a week.

also not sure if i need a balun here or if i can just run coax directly to it. i read like three different things on three different sites and now im more confused than when i started.

the solder joint alone wont hold for long outdoors, learned that the hard way years ago. what i do is drill a small hole in the connector housing or use a zip tie anchor point and loop the wire back on itself before soldering, so the mechanical stress is on the wire loop not the joint itself. some guys use those little plastic dipole center insulators you can buy cheap, they have strain relief holes already built in and you just run your coax through the bottom. honestly for a first build that might be easier than fabricating something from scratch.

on the balun question — for a simple 40m dipole fed with 50 ohm coax you can get away without one, lots of people do. but you might see some common mode current on the coax braid which can cause RF in the shack and pattern distortion. a simple 1:1 current balun makes a noticeable difference. easiest homebrew version is just wind 8 to 10 turns of the coax itself into a coil about 6 inches in diameter right at the feedpoint, tape it up good and call it a day. not perfect but way better than nothing.

yeah what he said about the strain relief is right. also 33.5 feet is just a starting point, 40m is a wide band and depending on where in the band you want to be centered youll probably need to trim. hook up an antenna analyzer if you have one or borrow one and check the SWR before you finalize the length. i cut mine a little long on purpose and trimmed down in small increments. way easier than trying to add wire back on lol