so ive been running a flat 40m dipole at about 35 feet for a while now, fed with coax through a 1:1 balun, works decent but ive been thinking about dropping the center and running it inverted V style mostly because its easier to support with just a single center mast and i can get the ends lower to the ground without them being a hazard

the thing i keep reading is that the inverted V supposedly has a slightly lower radiation angle which sounds great for dx, but then someone else told me the pattern gets broader which kind of cancels that out, and now i dont know what to believe. anyone actually compared these back to back or have a feel for whether its a noticeable thing on the air vs just a modeling thing that doesnt really matter at normal heights

i dont have EZNEC or anything set up right now so im kind of going on gut feel and whatever i read which is probably not ideal

honestly for most purposes at 35 feet youre not going to notice a huge difference either way. the inverted V does broaden the pattern a bit and yeah you lose a tiny bit of gain compared to a flat dipole at the same height but were talking fractions of a dB at best. what matters more is just getting it up and using it.

the real practical win with inverted V is exactly what you said — single support point and easier to manage the ends. ive run both and i genuinely couldnt tell a difference on 40m casual operating. if you were chasing serious dx maybe youd care but for general use just do whichever one you can get higher

i ran a flat dipole for years then switched to inverted V when i lost one of my end supports after a storm and never bothered changing back. 40 and 80 both, same coax feed. signal reports didnt change noticeably. the angle thing is real in modeling but at normal suburban heights the ground reflection is dominating everything anyway so the theoretical difference kind of gets swamped out. download MMANA-GAL if you want to play with it, its free and way easier to get started with than EZNEC in my opinion