End fed on the ground?

I dropped the 10m pole holding up the coax fed (via a 4:1UnUn) compromise antenna to the ground earlier today. It's now facing downhill and, in reality is about 6-12 inches off the ground.

Well, it works better on 40m than it did before, much lower noise, tunes fine and reports are great. I have used a LOG antenna for receive only in the past and found it a little disappointing, so this is a pleasant surprise.

I am going to run a full size 40m end fed along the fence and see if it's as good - I think Neal did this?

I have an end-fed half-wave for 40m which has half its length looped around a washing line (!!) and the other half attached to a wooden fence, so it’s only a couple of metres above ground. 

With my MFJ tuner I’ve persuaded it to work on all bands from 160m to 6m and actually performance has been quite good. Notable contacts have been Market Reef on 160m FT8 and being heard in the USA and Canada on 6m FT8, all with powers in the 30 watt level.

Although I live in a building consisting of maisonettes in a dense urban area, the electrical noise is surprisingly quite low.

Hi Keith, it's the noise that has dropped that is the most astonishing. Probably not that surprising when you think that the radiation pattern is now skewed skyward.

It's a lucky finding and when I put the pole the pole back up I shall definitely be connecting the spare coax to a 49:1 UnUn and installing a 40m half wave along the fence line.

I’m not sure whether the lack of noise here is due to the radiation being predominantly straight up (as you mention) or whether I’m just lucky in not having any QRM-generating electronics close by. 

I suspect it’s possibly the former, as within a few hundred metres I have numerous houses, shops, medical offices, and a museum all of which must have electronic devices.

Surrounded by houses here, fortunately the gardens are quite long. Far too many trendy solar panels too!

I've made up the UnUn and element ready to go, we shall see if it works. The feed point will be 5m higher than the end of the element and no point will be more than 3 feet above ground. If necessary I can drop it down lower.

I have really enjoyed 40m today because of this storm