Final 30m comparison

And finally, folks, whilst I am in my WSPR testing mood, here is a quick comparison of the shortened vertical (up to where the blue line drops below the red line on April 05 - that was my brief loop test), against my half sloper fed against the tower with a 12m Yagi on top:

 

In essence, whilst my half sloper is about 4dB better (the vertical was 10dB better) on DX spots against the other station (a ground-fed vertical), performance across all distances, including non-DX, is essentially identical.  

I've now made the shortened vertical a bit more beach-ready, and hope to conduct some tests with it over the coming days.