"I also need to come up with an aesthetically pleasing way to keep people away from the vertical element."

--
I don't think I ever had a radial come loose more than a year or two after it was put down. Even then, the threat would be more to a lawn mower.

Real danger to a kid -- or adult -- is more from touching the transmitting radiator. That can cause a nasty RF burn. Did you see the recent thread here on that subject? Consider an elevated vertical or a high dipole, especially if running high power.    

> Why do you want to bury radial wires?

My back yard must be 50% copper from all the various types of radial wire I've laid out over the past 20 years. Just checked and I'm currently working from a 500' roll of Home Depot #14 THHN with green insulation,  

With all the rain my QTH got this summer, my grass is thick and long. Never looked healthier. Trees too.

Radials should be fastened to the TOP of the soil (I use the ends of wire coat hangers to tack them down). They bury themselves in a few months under a tough web of thatch. With all the rain we've had, I can't find some that I laid down just a month ago.

Also, there is some indication that surface mounted radials may function microscopically better than deeply buried ones.  

Consider getting on 60 Meters this fall when the band quiets down. There's been no KL7 activity lately on the 5 MHZ band. Most DX is done on CH 5 which is 5403.5, or sometimes Channel 4.  Remember USB only with a 50 ERP power limit.  

Recently, the third Saturday evening (2300-0300) of each month has been designated a Trans-Atlantic Activity Night. You'll find more DXers on at that time.      

"As for 40 meters, wait for the next domestic contest and as soon as the sun sets start calling "CQ contest". You'll find out how many hams use 40 meters."

--
"start calling "CQ contest". No, far better to just tune, unless you have a very good station.  

40 is a great DX band, and not JUST at night. During major contests I start working 40 three hours or more before dark and continue several hours after sunup.

Very rarely I've heard DX ALL DAY on 40. I remember hearing weak Japanese stations at high noon during a summer contest years ago. (they were all running KWs and yagis).

40 SSB DXing is markedly better than it was years ago due to far less broadcast interference. Most SSB DX contest operation is done using tricky split frequency operation.

I've worked virtually every country on 40 CW and perhaps 250 on 40 SSB

Doesn't it seem that no matter how dreadful the service is from ham suppliers, someone here will rush to defend the company?

And No... "going on a 2-week vacation with the kids" in July (if that happened) doesn't excuse 9 months of terrible service.

--
Just had yet ANOTHER botched ham product arrive (not from Idiom): Ordered some finished coax jumpers with connectors installed. They arrived with the dimensions correctly labeled on each. But each jumper was far too long. For example, one 15' length actually measured 22'.

I paid a substantial premium for those finished cables and had to redo them myself. Good thing I didn't discover the problem at the top of a 150' tower.

Built per instructions, the DX Engineering MBVE-1 fast taper "43 footer" is actually about 44.5 feet to 45 feet tall depending on how much overlapping is done between the sixteen telescoping tubing sections.
see http://www.dxengineering.com/pdf/Vertical%20Comparison%20Z.pdf

My modeling also shows the antenna should have a slightly cleaner pure DX pattern on 20 Meters with a height around 39-42 feet.

A virtue of the DX Engineering MBVE-1 is that everything is easily adjustable (note the tilt base). Below 20 meters, in calm winds, I use mine fully extended-- or even more -- with the addition of top loading or more [guyed] tubing. Above 20, the telescoping radiator can be collapsed for better low angle pattern.

 >>> "Rather than answer my email or phone calls I'd rather they spend the time getting caught up."


 >>> "This is July. People with kids in school go on vacation. It's easy to believe they could go out of town for two weeks, or longer."

==========
Unbelievable comments!  So very 1960s (pre-Japan)!

The minimal standard of business communication requires that customer inquiries be answered in a day or two...max. That's as essential to staying in business as paying the electric bill.

"Your antenna instincts are really well defined and your choices are well researched."  

Agree, and also agree that a fan dipole would be good. Be aware those nice trees will be likely whipping around in different directions and could snap whatever antenna you go with. Make sure your fan dipole doesn't wrap around itself in the wind. A dipole at 60 feet or more should work wonderfully except right off the ends.

Good Luck

"The SWR on 50 ohm coax is 77:1"

Just modeled it in EZNEC and came up with a similar outrageous SWR for 14 mhz which surprised me. That would be quite lossy with a long run of RG8X. Again, shorter and better coax would help. 5-9 dB of loss shouldn't affect your ability to hear. Would be like turning down the gain a bit.

Modeling that antenna sure didn't reveal much merit in it. It does exhibit low SWR on some frequencies but all, except 3.6 mhz are between ham bands. No doubt the pattern is odd above 80, too.

"The background level is S6-9, and now I can hardly hear the noontime net (or anything else) above the noise."


Funny... I was on 40 CW last night and noted how HOT the band was (for a change).

3B8CF from Mauritius in the Indian Ocean was S-8 on my TS-850's meter at 7.005 mhz around 0500Z.  Worked V73NS in the Pacific who was 589 also. One French station was S-9. My antenna was a 45 foot tall ground mounted vertical.

It's quite possible that skip has been too long to work stateside nets well at noon.  

40 was very noisy at midnight and probably was at noon too. Ham activity is very low. Your antenna is probably working fine. Assume the noise you hear is normal seasonal atmospheric static if the level bounces around a lot.

Tip: the best place to hear DX on 40 is below 7.010 on CW.
 

It would take some doing to figure everything involved. Need to get an idea of the SWR. I was assuming a fairly short run of decent coax.

Try VK1OD's loss calculator:
http://www.vk1od.net/tl/tllc.php

Loss looks to be just a few dB which would hardly turn Italian big guns into "peeps" from the US east coast. Again, noise would drop too.

"Well considering the fact that I had the same wire up for the last 6 months, and barely heard a peep while spinning the dial, and to hearing stations from all over now..."

"OD: so you are saying..."


I'm saying the old antenna had to be really, really dreadful, or simply broken.

I've used many wires over the years. 1/2 wave dipoles, fan type, trap dipoles, and yes, long dipoles fed with ladder line. All worked about as expected, with only minor differences, mostly structural.

You should have been able to hear plenty of DX on 20 during the past six months EVEN with an astronomical SWR which would reduce the signal strength somewhat and ALSO the noise.

I don't want new hams to get the idea that 130 foot dipoles fed with ladder line are somehow wondrous.

It's unlikely your new antenna is one dB better than the old one.

You didn't do an A/B comparison and even that wouldn't be meaningful based on such a short test. It's hard to believe anyone in New York could be thrilled with an Italian contact.

But your report is now part of the internet and will be seen by lots of new hams.

I live 800 miles farther from Europe and have worked such stations with one watt into fairly low coax fed dipoles... many, many times. I have actually made one contact for fun with a dummy load.

I've tried open wire feeds and went back to coax which is far more popular.

"4. Get as many large nails as radials."

I wouldn't want large nails lurking in my lawn. I use wire ends from coat hangers to tack down my new radials laid on the grass. I think non-metallic degradable clips are available.

I put down some radials 4 weeks ago and I can barely find them now.

There's no reason to "attempt" to "tune" ground mounted radials. I just use a bunch of wires that roughly fit the area: short radials near the house and drive, and very long ones where I have the room.
 
       

"In the 50's, I talked all over the world running 40w AM from a Globe Scout on 10m (and 11m). :-)"


Your Globe Scout and My DX100 (on the rare occasions it worked) ... and a Sun that looked like smallpox.

>>> But there's nothing like time to filter memories.

Those days were a hoot. But AM would soon prove far inferior to SSB. The 1958 10 Meter CQWW Phone record which still stands from Libya, a popular contest QTH then,  is [drum roll] 328 Q's in 60 countries.  

Look how bad Phone scores were in the 1950s when almost all stations used AM:
http://www.cqww.com/records_ph_africa.htm

At that sunspot peak, 10 meters was often open for DX, especially from Africa, from before dawn until way after dark.

See too that the 15 meter Libyan record set in 1962 is only 220 QSOs.  

I remember reading about the early 60's 5A1TW contest operations and how they averaged around 20 contracts an hour in the all band category.