so ive been putting this off for months but i finally sat down and built a 40m dipole out of some 14 gauge stranded wire i had in the garage. cut each leg to roughly 33.5 feet based on the 468/f formula, used a so-239 chassis connector as the center insulator which i know isnt ideal but it was what i had laying around. the ends are tied off with some old dog leash clips i found which honestly work pretty well as makeshift strain relief.

my question is about the feedline situation. ive got about 65 feet of RG-8X running down to the shack and im planning to run the dipole as an inverted V with the apex at maybe 25 feet off the ground, ends drooping down to about 8 feet. is that low enough to cause problems on 40? i know lower antennas tend to get more NVIS-y which is actually fine for my use case, mostly ragchewing with guys in the region. but i dont know if 25 feet apex is like... too low where it starts hurting more than helping.

also should i bother putting a 1:1 choke balun at the feedpoint or will it be okay without one for now? im using an LDG tuner at the rig end so the swr isnt a huge concern but ive read that without a balun you can get rf on the coax shield which then radiates and causes noise issues. just not sure if thats worth worrying about for a basic setup like this.

25 feet apex for 40m inverted V is pretty common and yeah it'll be more NVIS than DX which sounds like exactly what you want. you might lose a little efficiency compared to a proper half wavelength up but honestly for regional contacts it could actually work in your favor. ive run one at similar heights for years and it does fine for anything within 500 miles or so.

on the balun question -- dont skip it. i know it feels like a minor thing but common mode current on the coax really does cause headaches, especially if you ever notice your audio getting noisy when you key up or your rig acting weird. a simple choke balun isnt hard to make, just wind 8-10 turns of your coax on a FT-240-31 core and youre done. or even just a coax choke without a core if youre in a hurry -- wind about 10 turns into a coil about 6 inches in diameter and secure it with some zip ties. not as good as a proper ferrite choke but way better than nothing.

the SO-239 as a center piece is totally fine btw, plenty of people use them. seal it up with some self-amalgamating tape if its going to be outside long term.

dog leash clips lmao i love it. ham radio is 90% stuff from the garage anyway

i ran an inverted V on 40 at about that height for a couple years before i finally got a taller support and honestly the difference when i got it up to 40 feet was noticeable for dx but for stateside and regional stuff the lower one was totally fine. dont stress it too much, get it up and start making contacts, you can always tweak later