so ive been running a ground mounted vertical for 40m for about two years now and its been okay, works decent for DX surprisingly but local stuff kind of sucks which i guess is expected. anyway my neighbor is letting me use one of his big trees to put up a dipole and the tree is probably... 45 feet? maybe a bit more. ive read a million times that a dipole at a half wavelength is the gold standard or whatever but 45 feet on 40m isnt even close to that. so im wondering if its even worth the effort of putting up the dipole or if i should just leave the vertical alone. the vertical has 32 radials which took me forever to lay down so its not like its a bad antenna, im just curious if the dipole would actually give me something different or better. mostly do ragchews and occasionally try to work some DX when condx are good.

45 feet is around 0.3 wavelengths on 40m which yeah isnt ideal but honestly its not as bad as people make it sound. the pattern will be a bit more toward the horizon than a lower dipole which actually helps for DX some. the bigger thing is whether you can orient the dipole in a useful direction. a dipole at that height will have some directivity so if you can point the broadside toward europe or wherever you care about, that might actually be better than your vertical in some directions. i ran a dipole at 35 feet for years and it worked fine, made plenty of contacts. your radial field on the vertical is good though, 32 is solid. id say put up the dipole and just compare them for a few weeks, the switching back and forth is honestly how you learn what each one actually does rather than just theorizing about it.

the vertical is probably better for low angle DX and the dipole at that height is gonna be better for closer in stuff, so they're kinda complementary honestly. if you can swing it, keep both and just pick whichever one is louder on receive for whatever you're trying to work. thats what i do, i have a vertical and an inverted V and i just switch depending on who im trying to talk to. the inverted V is only up maybe 40 feet at the apex and it still smokes the vertical for regional stuff on 40.