Thanks for all the input! Wow, radio/antenna theory is certainly
a controversial subject.
Anyway here are the results. I am comparing the dipole to my 100'
longwire which goes from the peak of my house to a tree in backyard. Off the ground about 15'.
This antenna has a 9:1 balun, coax feedline (about 30'RG58-U), braid grounded to 8' ground rod.
This was just a start for the dipole, using material I had on hand. I used Radio Shack
RG58-U coax, 50ohm. Each leg is 20 AWG at 33 1/2. The downward angle of each leg is about 30 degrees.
I attached an image showing the layout. Roughly an inverted V.
I was thinking the 50ohm coax with the inverted V (lower impedance) would be a decent start.
I have a antenna switch, making it very easy to do side by side comparison. Listening to Radio Paisano this past weekend
I had a solid S9 on longwire and an S7 on Dipole with more noise. I had FLDIGI up and the waterfall show a lot more QRM
on Dipole.
So.. end result, not too impressive compaired to the longwire but does perform ok. I was hoping for a stronger signal with the
half wave dipole. Tuning around on other bands for the hell of it the dipole works well on stronger stations with about 10db less
than the longwire. For example, longwire on strong BC station was S9+10, dipole an S9.
Moving forward on this I think my next move would be Balun, hopefully cut down on QRM.
I think this comparison shows more of how well my longwire works than how poorly the dipole works.