so ive been going back and forth on this for a while now and cant quite make up my mind. currently running a 40m dipole at about 25 feet which i know isnt ideal but its what i can do with my lot. getting okay results into europe from the east coast on most evenings but nothing to write home about. a buddy of mine keeps telling me i should just put up a vertical instead and use the radial field to make up for the low height, says hell get out better with his gap titan than i do with the dipole.

thing is i feel like 25 feet on 40m is only like a quarter wavelength up which puts the takeoff angle pretty high, so maybe the vertical argument actually makes sense here? but then i also read somewhere that a vertical without a decent radial system is basically a dummy load so im not sure which problem is worse — low dipole or vertical with mediocre radials.

anyone actually done a direct comparison on 40 or 80 at low heights? not looking for a perfect answer just curious what people have actually experienced

the radial thing is real and it matters a lot, im not gonna sugarcoat it. ive had verticals that were basically useless until i got a decent ground system under them. like genuinely couldnt understand why i was getting beat by guys running 100w into dipoles until i laid down about 30 radials and suddenly it started making sense. the gap and similar no-radial designs are a bit different because theyre elevated and use a counterpoise arrangement but even those benefit from some attention to the feedpoint situation.

at 25 feet your dipole is kind of in that awkward zone where its high enough to not be a total disaster but low enough that youre not getting the low-angle radiation you want for dx. if i had to pick between a low dipole and a vertical with a modest ground system id probably lean vertical for 40m dx, but honestly if you can squeeze even another 10-15 feet out of your dipole that changes the math pretty quick. what supports do you have to work with?

ran almost exactly this comparison at my old QTH. had a 40m dipole at like 28 feet and put up a vertical with 16 radials and ran them side by side for a few months. on dx the vertical won more often than not, on regional stuff under like 500 miles the dipole was usually better especially for NVIS-ish paths. the vertical also had way more noise on receive which drove me nuts during contests. ended up keeping both and just switching depending on what i was doing