so ive been running a pretty basic 40m dipole for about two years now, its fed with 50 ohm coax and the center is up about 35 feet with the ends drooping down at maybe 30 degrees off horizontal. works fine, ive made plenty of contacts, but i keep reading that a true flat-top dipole is meaningfully better and i guess i want to know if thats actually true in practice or if its just one of those things people say.

my yard situation makes a flat-top tricky, i'd have to guy something up in the middle of the yard which the wife is not going to love. the inverted v is nice because i can just use the one support and the ends are tied off low where they dont bother anyone. SWR is good across most of the band, maybe 1.5:1 at the edges which is fine.

anyone actually done an a/b comparison or is this one of those differences that only shows up on paper?

honestly the difference in the real world is pretty small in my experience. yeah the inverted v has a slightly higher radiation angle and its a bit more omnidirectional which can actually be a plus depending on what youre trying to do. the flat-top will give you maybe a dB or two lower takeoff angle which helps for DX, but for general ragchewing on 40m youre not going to notice. i ran both configs over a couple seasons and my log doesnt look dramatically different between them. keep the inverted v and put your energy into something that actually matters like feedline losses or getting more height if you can.

i switched from inverted v to a flat dipole last spring because i finally got a second tree sorted out and tbh the difference was less than i expected. maybe signals are slightly crispier into europe from the east coast but i cant say for sure thats the antenna or just band conditions being band conditions. one thing i will say is my SWR curve got flatter across the band which was nice. but if your v is working and the domestic situation is stable id leave it alone lol