so ive been putting this off for way too long but last weekend i finally cut and hung a 40m dipole out of some 14 gauge stranded wire i had sitting in the garage. center insulator is just a piece of Schedule 40 PVC i drilled through, nothing fancy. coax goes straight down to a 1:1 choke balun i wound myself on an FT240-43 core, about 11 turns of RG-8X.

the thing actually works, SWR is sitting around 1.4:1 at the bottom of the band which is where i want it, creeps up to about 2.8 at the top but my tuner handles it fine. my question is more about height — right now its only about 22 feet at the apex in an inverted V configuration, feedpoint angle is maybe 120 degrees? its strung between my chimney and a tree. i keep reading conflicting stuff about whether the inverted V is actually worse than a flat top at that height or if its basically a wash. anyone actually done back to back testing on this or is it just forum mythology at this point

22 feet for 40m inverted V is definitely on the low side but its not useless by any means. the inverted V compresses the radiation angle a bit compared to a flat top, which some people say hurts DX but honestly at that height neither configuration is doing great for low angle radiation anyway, you're mostly doing NVIS and regional stuff whether you like it or not.

i ran an inverted V at similar height for probably three years before i got the apex up to 35 feet and the difference was noticeable but not dramatic. the bigger thing i noticed was the feedpoint impedance drops quite a bit on the inverted V compared to 50 ohm flat top, so your 1.4 SWR actually sounds like your balun and wire length are doing something right. the 120 degree angle is pretty good, some guys go way more droopy than that and then wonder why their SWR is all over the place. if you can get even 5 more feet on the apex itll help, but dont tear down what works just to chase another half dB.

that FT240-43 choke is solid for 40m, good choice. i used a -31 mix on mine first and had all kinds of weird common mode stuff showing up on my shack equipment, switching to -43 for the lower bands made a real difference. your SWR numbers sound fine honestly, 1.4 at the bottom is totally workable even without a tuner.