so ive been going back and forth on this for a while now and figured id just ask here because i keep reading contradictory stuff online. im running a modest setup, IC-7300 into a LDG tuner, and right now i have a half wave dipole for 40m strung up inverted-V style about 30 feet at the apex. its fed with RG-8X into the shack. works okay i guess but im wondering if a vertical would do better for DX since ive read a bunch of times that verticals have a lower takeoff angle and thats better for longer paths.

the thing is i also read that verticals need a decent radial system or they just suck up the RF into the ground and you lose half your power anyway. and i dont really have the yard space to bury like 60 radials or whatever the recommendation is. i was thinking about one of those trap verticals or maybe even just a simple quarter wave with like 4 or 8 radials elevated a couple feet off the ground.

current dipole does get me into europe from the midwest pretty regularly on 40 when conditions are up but im wondering if im leaving contacts on the table. anyone actually compared these two antenna types head to head at their own station? not looking for theoretical stuff, just real world experience from people who have actually used both.

ran both for a couple years at my old QTH before i moved and honestly the answer is annoyingly it depends. my inverted-V was about the same height as yours and it was great for regional stuff out to maybe 1000 miles, really solid signals, easy to tune, no fuss. the vertical i had was a homebrew quarter wave with 16 elevated radials at about 4 feet off the ground and yeah it did seem to punch a bit better into europe at the lower angles but the difference wasnt like night and day, more like one or two S units on a good path.

the radial thing is real though. i tried running mine with just 4 radials first and it was noticeably worse, more loss, tuner was unhappy, the whole thing. went to 16 and it cleaned right up. if you cant do elevated radials properly id honestly just keep the dipole and maybe try getting it up higher if thats possible. every 5-10 feet of additional height helps more than people think on an inverted-V.

i went through the exact same debate last spring and ended up just building both lol. dipole is still up as a backup. my take is the vertical wins for DX but its way more work and way more sensitive to everything around it — my neighbor's chain link fence was causing me grief for weeks before i figured out what was happening. dipole just works, plug it in and go. if DX is your main thing go vertical with proper radials, if you want something reliable that covers everything and dont want to mess with it the dipole is hard to beat honestly