so i've been putting this off forever but last weekend i finally just went ahead and built a simple 40m dipole from scratch. used some 14awg stranded wire i had laying around from an old extension cord project, grabbed a so-239 chassis connector from the junk box, and just went at it. cut each leg to about 33.5 feet based on the 468/f formula and figured id tune from there.

fed it with about 50 feet of RG-8X which i know isnt ideal but its what i had. hung it in an inverted V configuration off a 25 foot mast in the backyard, ends tied off to the fence posts maybe 8 feet up. SWR on the low end of 40 came out around 1.4:1 without any tuner which honestly surprised me. i was expecting a disaster.

made a few contacts into the midwest and even one down to florida which was cool. the whole thing cost me basically nothing. i kind of wish i'd done this years ago instead of spending money on commercial HF antennas. anyway im just sharing this because if you've been on the fence about building something, the 468 formula really does get you close enough to start.

yeah the inverted V is super forgiving honestly, the angle of the legs changes the feedpoint impedance a little so you usually end up somewhere between 50 and 75 ohms depending on how shallow the V is, which works out pretty well for coax without a balun. though i will say, if you didnt put a 1:1 choke or any kind of balun at the feedpoint you might be getting some RF coming back down the coax shield. doesnt always show up in the SWR but it can cause noise issues or weird patterns. worth throwing a few ferrite cores on the coax near the feedpoint if you have any around, takes about five minutes and can make a real difference. glad it worked out though, wire antennas are genuinely underrated.

14awg stranded from an extension cord is what half my antenna farm is made of lol. people overthink the wire type way too much. solid copper is marginally better for permanent outdoor installs because of corrosion but stranded works fine especially if youre just experimenting. what were you using for strain relief at the feedpoint? thats the part that always fails on me first, the solder joints take all the tension if you dont do something about it.