so ive been running a 40m half wave dipole at about 30 feet for the past couple years, fed with coax through a 1:1 balun, nothing fancy. works ok, maybe 3-4 S units above the noise on most contacts. last month i put up a vertical — a trap vertical that covers 40 through 10 — just to see what the difference would be like because i kept reading about how verticals are supposedly better for DX due to the lower takeoff angle and all that.

honestly? the vertical is noisier on receive and i feel like im giving up signal on most paths i actually use. tried running a decent radial field, like 16 radials cut to roughly quarter wave, not perfect but not bad either. the dipole just seems to punch better on nearby stuff and honestly holds its own even on some of the longer haul contacts into europe. im in the midwest so maybe thats part of it, i dunno.

is there something wrong with my setup or is this a normal experience? i see so many people swearing by verticals for HF and im just not seeing it on 40. would love to hear if anyone has actually done a real comparison side by side.

yeah that tracks with my experience honestly. the vertical noise thing is real — they pick up local QRM like crazy unless you have a really clean RF environment. 30 feet isnt exactly ideal for a dipole either, thats only about a third of a wavelength up on 40, so your takeoff angle isnt as low as people imagine, but its still a decent antenna. the vertical should theoretically win on low angle stuff once you get past say 1500 miles but in practice the extra noise floor really hurts you. 16 radials is ok but if you could get to 30 or 32 you'd probably see it tighten up a bit on transmit at least. also trap verticals give up something to a monoband vertical — the traps have losses that add up. if you built a real quarterwave 40m vertical with 30+ radials you might change your tune. or you might not, depends on your local noise. i ran a comparison at my place for about 6 months, switchable from the shack, and the vertical only really won consistently on paths to JA and VK late at night. everything else the dipole was competitive or better.

same thing happened to me when i put up a hustler 6btv a few years back. everyone talks about low angle radiation but nobody mentions it also receives every switching power supply and led driver in a three block radius equally well lol. i eventually just left the vertical up as a second antenna and used it for 10 and 15 mostly where it does seem to do better for me. on 40 at night my dipole wins almost every time. your experience sounds totally normal to me.