so ive been running a simple 40m dipole for about two years now, fed with coax, center at maybe 30 feet which i know isnt ideal but its what i can do with the trees i have. works ok, definitely has a low angle of radiation problem being that low but i still make contacts so whatever. anyway my neighbor just gave me a full size 40m vertical he pulled out of his yard, some old butternut or similar, and im trying to decide if its worth putting up. the thing needs a radial system and i really dont have a ton of flat yard to work with, maybe i can get 16 or so radials down but they'd be short, like 15 feet each. not the ideal quarter wave 33 footers. my question is basically whether a mediocre vertical with a compromised radial field is going to beat out a low dipole for dx, or am i just going to end up with something that performs worse and took me a weekend to put up

i guess what im really asking is, is there a threshold where the radials are just too short to make the vertical worth using over a simple dipole. i keep reading conflicting things online and some guys say 16 short radials is fine and others say you need 32 or 64 quarter wave ones and honestly im confused. my lot isnt huge so this is kind of make or break for whether i bother

the radial situation is really what's going to determine this honestly. 16 short radials is going to have noticeably higher ground loss than a proper system, but here's the thing - a dipole at 30 feet on 40m is also not exactly a dx machine. you're looking at a pretty high takeoff angle either way. i ran a similar comparison at my old house and the vertical, even with a so-so ground system, was pulling in stuff from EU on 40m that the dipole just wasn't hearing. it's not night and day but the difference is real especially on the dx paths.

one thing worth doing if you put it up - lay whatever radials you can even if they're short and go in random directions, then actually compare them back to back on a signal from a known station. don't just trust the theory, the ground conductivity at your specific QTH matters a lot and you won't know until you try it. some guys in areas with good soil get away with surprisingly few radials.

i had a butternut hf9v for a few years and the radials thing drove me crazy. ended up with like 25 radials of varying length just because that's what i could do and it worked fine for me, not amazing but fine. the vertical definitely beats a low dipole for dx in my experience but if you're mostly doing domestic stuff the dipole is probably better since it has a higher angle and just kind of works for shorter paths. depends what you want to do with it i guess