so ive been running a flat top dipole for 40m at about 35 feet for the past couple years, fed with coax and a 1:1 choke at the feedpoint. works fine, no complaints really. but i keep reading that an inverted V with the apex at that same height performs noticeably worse because the legs angle down and change the radiation angle or something. my neighbor just put up an inverted V with the apex at maybe 40 feet and he seems to be working roughly the same stations i am, sometimes better on certain paths.

now im not trying to start a religious war here but i genuinely cant figure out if the difference matters at the HF level where atmospheric conditions are gonna swamp a few dB of antenna advantage anyway. the inverted V is obviously way easier to support since you only need one high point. i have two trees but one of them is starting to look sketchy and if it goes down im probably going back to a single support situation.

anyone actually done a side by side on this or is it one of those things that looks big in theory but gets lost in the noise in practice?

the honest answer is it depends a lot on the angle of the legs. if youre getting the apex up high and the ends are still clearing the ground by 10 feet or so, youre not giving up much. the pattern does get a bit more omnidirectional which some people actually prefer for 40m since you're not always chasing one specific direction. the flat top will technically have a lower angle of radiation if both are at the same apex height but on 40 at night when the band is open, conditions are gonna eat that difference alive.

i ran both for a few months when i had a second support available and honestly my signal reports were within a dB or two either way. the inverted V was easier to tune and the feedpoint impedance was closer to 50 ohms without as much fiddling. i actually went back to the inverted V when i lost a support tree in a storm and never really felt like i was missing much.

yeah this has been bugging me too, i see the modeling software show like 1.5 to 2 dB difference and on paper that sounds like something but in a real qso that's nothing. half the time the other station has a noisy rx anyway so it doesnt matter if you're a little stronger theoretically.

one thing tho — the inverted V does have the legs closer to horizontal at the top where most of the radiation happens, so the compromise isnt as bad as people make it sound. EZNEC if you havent already, throw your actual geometry in there and see what it spits out for your specific heights and leg angles. might surprise you either way.