so ive been running a pretty standard 40m dipole for about two years now, center fed with some leftover coax I had lying around, ends tied off to a couple trees maybe 30 feet up at the apex. works fine, no complaints really. but i keep reading about how verticals clean up low angle radiation and are supposedly better for DX and i cant decide if thats actually worth anything in practice or if its just marketing stuff people repeat.

the thing is i have a decent sized backyard and could probably put up a quarter wave vertical with a decent radial field, maybe 30 or 40 radials buried just under the surface. but thats a lot of work and i already have a functional antenna. my noise floor is somewhere around S4-S5 depending on the band and time of day which i know isnt great, most of it seems local, some switching power supply garbage from the neighbors.

so my actual question is — has anyone done a real back to back comparison between the two on 40m specifically, not just theory. does the vertical actually pull in more DX at the expense of local stuff or is this one of those things that sounds better on paper

did this exact comparison a few years back actually. had a dipole at about 35 feet and put up a vertical with 32 radials over a couple weekends. honestly the results were kind of nuanced and not the slam dunk either way i was expecting.

for DX yeah the vertical had a noticeable edge on signals coming in low, stuff from EU and JA especially in the mornings. like stations that were S5 on the dipole were sometimes S7-S8 on the vertical. but the vertical also picked up WAY more noise, my local QRM went through the roof. the dipole was quieter by probably 10dB in certain directions just because of the pattern. so if i was calling CQ domestically or working any stateside stuff the dipole was more comfortable to operate.

ended up keeping both and just switching between them depending on what im doing. for a serious DX session late at night when the band is actually open the vertical wins. just casually ragchewing with guys a few states over, dipole all the way. if youre only gonna have one antenna and your noise floor is already rough i might actually stick with the dipole unless you can get that vertical up high enough to really matter

the radial system honestly makes or breaks the vertical, thats the part people underestimate. ive seen guys put up a vertical and wonder why it underperforms and its almost always the ground system. 4 radials is not a ground system, its barely better than nothing. you really need to commit to it. 60+ radials and suddenly it starts behaving like the textbooks say.

also worth noting — if your noise is local and broadside to the dipole youre gonna have a bad time switching to a vertical since those things have pretty omnidirectional pickup. not always ideal in a noisy suburban lot.