so ive been running a simple 40m dipole in an inverted V config for about two years now, apex around 35 feet which i know isnt ideal but its what the trees give me. neighbor let me borrow his MFJ vertical last weekend, one of the trapped multiband ones, and i figured id do a proper A/B comparison since conditions were decent both days.

honestly expected the vertical to stomp my dipole on the low angle stuff, especially for DX. and yeah for some EU stations early in the morning it did seem a bit better, maybe a couple S units on a few contacts. but on 40m domestic the dipole was noticeably cleaner, less noise floor overall, and i was getting better reports from guys in the midwest when i was running the dipole. the vertical picked up a ton of local hash that I dont really get with the wire.

i know the vertical was probably not perfectly matched and the radial situation was kind of a mess, like maybe 4 or 5 radials just laid on the grass. maybe thats the problem. anyway curious if anyone has done similar comparisons or if im just confirming what everyone already knows about noise on verticals

yeah the radials are almost certainly your culprit there. 4-5 on the ground is basically nothing, you really want at least 16 to start seeing the pattern clean up and even then elevated radials behave differently than buried ones. I ran a GAP Titan for a while and the noise floor was miserable until i got serious about the ground system, put down 32 radials around 15-16 feet each and it transformed the antenna. still noisier than my dipole on receive but the transmit performance was genuinely better for DX at that point.

the inverted V isnt giving you great low angle radiation either though, its more of a compromise antenna all around. if you ever get a chance to try a proper dipole flat top at even 50 feet versus a well-built vertical with a decent radial field it gets more interesting. but for most suburban installs the wire just wins on noise alone, thats just the reality

this matches my experience pretty much exactly. i had a hustler 6BTV for a while and the rx noise was just constant, neighbors inverters, switching supplies, all of it. my 80m dipole sitting at like 40 feet was way quieter even though everyone says verticals are supposed to be the DX machine. i think for guys without a lot of land and a proper ground system the dipole wins more often than the magazines would have you believe