All good points.
One more factor (though you have no control over it) is soil conductivity. In Florida and I guess maybe place like the Mississippi River Valley, the Texas Gulf Coast, perhaps the Rhine Valley and Finland (with many lakes and rivers) in Europe, the soil is much more conductive than it is here in the southern half of California and this affects all antennas.
Any HF antenna needs to be higher here (where the soil is poor) to distance itself from the lossy soil. In the case of any sort of unbalanced antenna like simple monopoles ("verticals" in ham speak), EFHW, inverted L, inverted F, etc., the worse the coil conductivity, the more extensive and longer the radial system needs to be for similar reasons: mask the close proximity of the very lossy ground to the antenna.
The difference between good and bad soil is modeled to be as much as 3-5 dB gain, depending upon many things, of course. Lossy soil can alter the directivity and pattern of an antenna to some degree, by altering how the radiation works with the soil (reflections, etc.)
So get that thing up in the air as high as you can.