so ive been running a straight dipole for 40m for about two years now, center fed, ends tied off to some trees at maybe 35 feet. works fine, no complaints really. but i keep reading that an inverted V with the apex higher up supposedly has a lower radiation angle which helps for DX. my problem is i only have one really tall support, a pine tree that gets me maybe 50 feet at the top, and i cant really do a flat dipole any higher than what i have now.

so i'm thinking about reconfiguring it as an inverted V with the apex at 50 feet and the legs sloping down at maybe 120-130 degrees included angle. the ends would be pretty close to the ground, maybe 8-10 feet. wondering if that actually performs better or if im just moving deck chairs around. anybody done a direct comparison? i ran some models in EZNEC but honestly im not great at interpreting the takeoff angle stuff when the ground parameters are kind of guesswork anyway.

honestly the difference between those two configurations at those heights is probably smaller than the modeling makes it look, especially once you factor in real ground versus the idealized stuff EZNEC uses by default. at 35 feet a flat dipole on 40m is already pretty low in terms of wavelength so its not like youre getting screaming low angles either way.

that said i did go from a flat dipole at 40 feet to an inverted V apex at 55 feet and subjectively it felt like a small improvement on longer paths, europe from the midwest kind of stuff. but i never did a proper A/B test so who knows how much was real and how much was just different band conditions that day. if the apex gets you meaningfully higher i'd try it just to try it. the reconfiguration isn't exactly a huge project if you're already working with the same feedline.

the included angle thing matters more than people think - once you go much past 130 degrees the feedpoint impedance starts dropping away from 50 ohms and your SWR gets weird unless youre using a tuner anyway. i had mine at like 140 degrees once and it was fine with a tuner but i noticed the noise floor seemed higher, maybe just a coincidence. kept the legs closer to 120 after that. probably not related but you know how it is, you change one thing and blame everything on it.