so ive been going back and forth on this for like two weeks now and i just need someone to tell me im overthinking it. i have a decent backyard, maybe 80 feet end to end, and im trying to decide between throwing up a simple 40m dipole or getting one of those trapped verticals. right now im using a random wire with a tuner and it works but the noise floor on receive is just terrible, like S7 on a quiet night which i know is partly the location (suburbs, lots of switching power supplies nearby) but i feel like a better antenna would help.

the dipole seems like the obvious choice because i have the space and they're cheap to build, but my only decent support is an oak tree on one end and the other end would have to come down pretty low, maybe 20 feet at the peak and like 8 feet on the far end. so its not gonna be a nice flat dipole, more like an inverted V or even worse. the vertical would go in the middle of the yard and id have room for maybe 8 radials if i bury them which i know isnt ideal but its what i have.

mostly doing SSB and some digital, not really chasing DX hard, just want reliable contacts on 40 and maybe 80 if i can get the vertical to load up on 80 with the tuner. anyone been through this same debate

honestly the inverted V at that height is still going to outperform a vertical with only 8 radials on 40m for most regional stuff. the radiation angle on the vertical with a minimal ground system is going to be higher than people think, you lose a lot of that low angle advantage when the ground system is compromised. and the noise pickup on a vertical in a suburban lot is usually worse anyway because it's omnidirectional and just soaks up everything.

the inverted V with the apex at 20 feet isnt glamorous but ive worked plenty of guys in europe from the midwest with worse setups than that. if you can get the feedpoint up to 25 or even 22 feet youll be in decent shape. just use good quality 450 ohm ladder line if you want to also use it on 80, run it to a 4:1 balun at the shack and then to your tuner. that way you get real multiband use out of one piece of wire and you're not dealing with the radial situation at all.

the random wire noise floor problem is probably more about the antenna than the location, a balanced feedline situation should help with that too.

i went through exactly this last spring. ended up doing the inverted V and dont regret it at all. my apex is only like 18 feet which everyone told me was too low but i regularly get 59 reports on 40 out to about 1200 miles which is all i really care about. the vertcal i had before (commercial trapped one) was just a noise magnet in my neighborhood.

only thing id add is dont cheap out on the center insulator/balun situation, i used a cheap 1:1 choke balun i wound myself and it made a noticeable difference in the noise floor compared to just running coax straight to the feedpoint.