so ive been running a flat top 40m dipole for a couple years now, center at about 35 feet with the ends drooping a bit because my yard just isnt big enough to keep it fully horizontal. basically turning into an inverted V anyway but not on purpose. got me thinking whether i should just commit to an actual inverted V with the apex higher and let the ends come down at a proper angle instead of this half-baked compromise im dealing with now.

the thing is my tallest support is a pine tree at maybe 45 feet, so if i pull the center up there and run the legs out at like 45 degrees im wondering how much i lose in terms of the lower angle radiation versus just fighting to keep the flat top as flat as i can. i do mostly domestic stuff on 40, some casual contesting, not really chasing DX hard so the low angle stuff matters less to me i think.

anybody actually done a side by side or modeled this out? i messed around in EZNEC a while back but i dont really trust my own inputs enough to draw conclusions from it

honestly for casual use and domestic contacts the difference is pretty small in practice. on paper the flat top has a slight edge for low angle but at 35-45 feet on 40m youre not getting amazing low angle radiation from either one, the antenna is just too low electrically speaking. an inverted V with apex at 45 and legs at 45 degrees is going to have a higher angle lobe anyway which actually works fine for stateside stuff, skip distances under 1000 miles or so.

i modeled something similar a while ago and the gain difference between a clean inverted V and a droopy flat top was basically noise, like half a dB or less. what matters more is feedpoint impedance — a proper inverted V at 45 degree leg angle comes in closer to 50 ohms which makes your coax happy without a tuner, whereas a flat top is closer to 72 and you might see some mismatch depending on your rig. so honestly just commit to the inverted V, easier to set up cleanly and probably fewer headaches

i went through basically this exact thing last spring. had a droopy dipole for years and finally just put up a proper inverted V off my tower at 40 feet. cant say i noticed a huge difference on receive or transmit if im being honest, signals i was working before im still working. maybe marginally better signal reports but could just be band conditions who knows

one thing i will say is the inverted V is way easier to deal with when a storm comes through. my old flat top was always sagging weird and one end was always lower than the other no matter what i did with the rope tensioning. the V just hangs there and does its thing