so ive been going back and forth on this for a few weeks now and figured id just ask here because the reddit threads are all over the place. im trying to decide between putting up a simple wire dipole for 40m or just doing a quarter wave vertical with some radials. my lot is not huge, maybe 80ft across, and i've got two trees that could support a dipole but it'd have to be kind of low, probably 25-30ft at the apex. not ideal i know.

the vertical i was thinking about is just a homebrewed thing, maybe a 33ft piece of aluminum tubing or even just wire up a fishing pole. throw down like 16-20 radials and call it a day. the thing is i work mostly dx and a few local nets and i genuinely cant figure out which way to go. everyone says verticals are good for dx because of the lower takeoff angle but then everyone also says a low dipole works just as well because it starts acting like a cloud warmer. which is actually true or does it just depend and nobody wants to say that out loud

honestly both camps are kind of right and thats the annoying answer you didnt want to hear. a dipole at 25ft on 40m is gonna have a pretty high takeoff angle yeah, like somewhere around 50-60 degrees depending on ground conductivity, so its going to favor closer in stuff more than real DX paths. but here's the thing — it'll still work for DX when conditions are decent, it just wont be optimized. the vertical with a decent radial field should get you down closer to 15-25 degrees which is where the long path stuff comes in.

that said i've worked plenty of JA and EU on a 40m dipole at 30ft. its not like you're deaf to DX, just running at a disadvantage compared to someone with a yagi at 60ft or whatever. if you actually want to chase DX seriously go vertical and dont skimp on the radials. 20 on the ground is okay, 32-64 is better but you get diminishing returns past that. if you mostly do nets and occasional DX the dipole is less hassle and just put it up inverted-V style.

i had basically the exact same situation last year and went with the vertical. built mine out of a 31ft spiderpole with wire along it, fed with coax and a 1:1 choke balun at the base. put down 24 radials on the ground and i was pretty happy with it for 40m DX. worked into asia a few times during good openings and it definitely feels like it punches reasonably well.

one thing i will say though is the vertical picks up way more local noise than my old dipole did. im in a suburban neighborhood and the RFI situation is annoying, hash from switching power supplies all over the place. the dipole i had before was quieter on receive. so just something to think about if you're in a noisy area.