so i finally got around to building a dipole instead of just buying one, figured it couldnt be that hard and honestly it wasnt but i do have a few questions now that its up in the air. i used some 14 gauge solid copper wire i had laying around from an old house project, cut it to half wave for 40m which came out to about 66 feet total, and hung it inverted-V style from a tree in the backyard with the apex at maybe 35 feet up.

the SWR is reading around 1.4:1 at the frequency i want which seems decent but im wondering if thats the wire or the feed point setup. i just used a choke balun i wound myself out of like 10 turns of RG-8X on a PVC form, not sure if thats sufficient or if i should be using a proper 1:1 current balun. also the legs arent perfectly equal in length, one side might be a foot shorter because of where the tree branches are, could that be throwing off the match or is a foot not a big deal at 40m?

anyway the thing actually works, made a few contacts into the midwest from here in the northeast last night which was cool, just want to tighten it up a bit before i call it done

1.4:1 is fine honestly, most rigs will tune that no problem and youre not losing meaningful power. the foot difference in leg length at 40m is pretty negligible, youre talking less than 1% difference so i wouldnt stress about that. the bigger thing with inverted-V is that your included angle matters — if the legs are drooping pretty steeply the feedpoint impedance drops below 50 ohms and thats probably where your slight mismatch is coming from rather than any asymmetry in the wire.

the choke balun situation is worth revisiting though. 10 turns of coax on PVC is probably getting you some choking reactance but without knowing the permeability of what youre winding over and the actual inductance its hard to say how effective it is at 7 MHz. a type 31 or type 43 ferrite toroid with the same coax wound through it will do a much better job keeping RF off the shield. its not gonna kill your antenna as-is but if youre ever scratching your head about RFI in the shack thats the first place id look.

nice work getting it up and making contacts, that's really the proof right there. i did almost the exact same thing for my first real antenna build except i used 12 gauge and it was way heavier than i expected, the center insulator i made from a piece of cutting board was sagging like crazy haha. ended up having to add a rope support in the middle.

anyway on the balun thing -- i just use a W2DU style choke made from a bunch of type 73 beads slid over the coax right at the feedpoint and it works great for 40 and 80. cheap and easy to make if you can find the beads. there's a guy on one of the homebrewing sites who has a calculator for how many beads you need for different bands