This is a great band for inter-G as well as DX.
Aerials for 40 metres:
I use a 100 foot doublet antenna on 40 metres with my Icom IC-7300. The antenna is great on 80 60 and 40 metres but results are not so good on the higher frequency bands. I use vertical aerials for those bands. I also have a 160 foot end-fed wire up at about 20 feet. This works extremely well on 40 metres with my Clansman RT-320.
This is my favourite band for the time being as it suffers the least noise and interference. Sadly, 80 and 160 metres are wiped out with noise. Even the 5MHz frequencies are plagued with noise at my QTH.
The 160 foot end-fed loads beautifully with the internal ATU in my Clansman PRC-320. Obviously the antenna is far too long for this band, but it works incredibly well. Bearing in mind that the PCR-320 only puts out 30 Watts, the punchy and toppy audio smashes through pileups.
More coming soon…