so ive been going back and forth on this for like three weeks now and i think im just overthinking it but here goes. im trying to put up something decent for 40m at my place, lot is about 80x120 feet so its not tiny but the neighbors are close enough that i have to be a little careful with what i do. right now im running a little vertical that came with my radio package deal and honestly it works but i feel like im leaving a lot on the table.

the question is basically whether to build a half wave dipole and just string it between the house and the big oak tree in the back, or go with a proper quarter wave vertical with some radials. ive read a bunch of stuff saying verticals are better for dx because of the low angle radiation but then other guys are saying a dipole up 35 feet is going to outperform a vertical in most situations. at 40m 35 feet is not that high obviously, only like a third of a wavelength, so im not sure the dipole would have that great a low angle component anyway.

current setup is a ts-590sg into the existing thing. just trying to figure out what makes sense before i spend a weekend building something.

honestly for a lot that size a dipole between the house and that oak tree is probably the path of least resistance and it'll work really well. 35 feet on 40m is nothing to sneeze at, youre not going to have the super low angles a vertical can hit but for domestic and regional contacts it will smoke a ground mounted vertical with a mediocre radial field. the thing people forget about verticals is the radials — you really need a lot of them to get that low angle performance everyone talks about. like 16 minimum to start seeing good results, ideally 32 or more, and most people just dont lay that much wire.

if you do go dipole just make sure you get it as high as you can, even a few extra feet matters at that frequency. and an inverted-v config off the peak of the house might actually get you a little higher than a flat top between the tree and the house depending on your roof line. worth measuring before you commit to anything.

had basically the same debate last year and ended up going with the dipole, no regrets. the vertical i had before just always seemed noisier to me, probably a ground issue or the radials werent great. dipole fed with ladder line into a tuner and it loads up on 80 and 20 too which is a bonus. ts-590 should be happy with whatever you end up with that thing has a solid tuner built in for minor adjustments.