so ive been putting this off for like two years because i kept telling myself id just buy a commercial antenna but wire is cheap and i finally just did it last weekend. cut a center fed dipole for 40m, used 14 gauge stranded copper from the hardware store, picked up a SO-239 chassis connector and just soldered directly to that through a piece of scrap PVC i had sitting around as an insulator/center piece thing. nothing fancy at all.

the math worked out to about 66 feet total, split 33 each side, which i know is the standard half wavelength calc. got it up in a rough inverted V shape, apex maybe 25 feet up tied to a tree in the backyard. ran about 40 feet of RG-8X down to the shack.

my SWR on 40m is sitting around 1.4:1 at the bottom of the band and creeps up to maybe 2.2 or so at the top, which seems reasonable to me but im not sure. also curious if i should be using a choke balun at the feedpoint — right now theres nothing and i realize that might be a problem. ive read conflicting stuff about whether it matters for a basic backyard setup. using an FT-891 if that changes anything.

that SWR curve sounds totally normal for a 40m dipole honestly, most rigs will tune that no problem and the FT-891 internal tuner should handle 2.2:1 easy. the inverted V shape actually shifts resonance down a bit compared to a flat dipole so if you wanted to center it in the band you might trim a few inches off each leg but its really not worth losing sleep over at those numbers.

on the balun question — yeah you want one. not because the radio will blow up without it but because without a choke at the feedpoint you can get RF coming back down the outside of the coax shield and that can cause all kinds of weird stuff — RFI in the shack, pattern distortion, the SWR changing when you touch the coax. a simple 1:1 choke balun made from winding 8-10 turns of your feedline coax on a FT-240-43 toroid takes maybe 20 minutes and makes a real difference. some guys use a coax choke (air wound coil of coax) and thats fine too for HF. for a basic 40m inverted V either works fine.

nice work getting it up, 14 gauge stranded is what i used on my first one too. the only thing id add is make sure your connections at the feedpoint are actually weatherproofed if its gonna stay up long term, i skipped that step once and had a totally weird SWR reading a few months later that turned out to just be corrosion at the solder joint. self fusing tape works great for wrapping the whole feedpoint area once youre happy with how it tunes.