okay so ive been going back and forth on this for like two months now and i just need someone to tell me to stop agonizing over it. currently running a 40m dipole at about 25 feet, fed with coax, works fine, gets me contacts, whatever. but ive been reading about verticals and how they have a lower angle of radiation which is supposedly better for DX and now im second guessing everything.

my yard is not huge. i can fit a vertical easier than i can get a dipole any higher than it already is. the thing is, i keep reading that verticals need a really good ground radial system to be efficient and that sounds like a lot of work to bury a bunch of wire. is the low angle of radiation actually going to make a noticeable difference in real world use or is this one of those things that only matters on paper? i mostly work SSB, some digital, mostly stateside but would love to work europe more consistently.

not trying to start a dipole vs vertical holy war, i know people have strong feelings about this lol, just genuinely trying to figure out if its worth the project

honest answer? at 25 feet your dipole is already pretty low on 40m, which actually means it's probably radiating at a higher angle than ideal anyway. so the vertical argument for DX has some merit in your situation. that said a vertical without a decent radial system is gonna have ground losses that eat up your signal and you might end up worse off than the dipole.

the sweet spot is usually at least 16-32 radials on the ground, doesnt have to be buried deep, just laying on the surface works fine and the grass covers it eventually. if you can do that the vertical will probably give you a noticeable improvement into europe on 40m, especially in the evenings when the band opens that direction. if you cant be bothered with radials honestly just leave the dipole up and try to get it higher if theres any way to do that. a dipole at 50 feet beats a poorly grounded vertical every time.

i went through exactly this last year. ended up putting up a trap vertical for 40/20/15 and spent a weekend laying out 24 radials. worked europe on 40 the first night which i had never done with my old dipole setup so that felt pretty good. but i also cant tell you if it was the vertical or just better band conditions that week, hard to do a real comparison. the radial laying is tedious but not actually that hard, just time consuming.