[TowerTalk] Help Configuring My Hail Mary Vertical?

[Kirk Kleinschmidt]

Hi, Gang,
Uncharacteristically, I'm moving to get ahead of winter's onslaught here in the upper Midwest, and one of my tasks is to configure my back yard vertical. It's one of the two "compromise" antennas I've managed to erect in the past year since moving (vertical and a 100-foot doublet @ 35 feet fed with open-wire line). I have accumulated several short towers (50-64 feet), but they won't likely make it up until next summer. So, I will be using what I have until then.
My doublet works exactly as expected (which isn't fantastic), so it's a relatively known quantity.
The vertical, which takes some 'splainin,' was very interesting last winter, and I hope to improve it for this season. It was much quieter on RX than expected (first vertical in 40 years on the air) -- which may indicate something horrible -- but it put some DX in the log on 80 and 160, even at my usual 5 W on CW, so it shows some kind of promise.
Staying the same: 32 on-ground radials, each 45 feet long, with four 70-footers at the four corners of the compass.
Last year: Being a temporary installation, I used a 4x4 post to hold up a 14-foot length of weatherproofed, oak closet rod. Three wires, cut for Low SWR on 80, 40 and 30 meters, ran up three "sides" of the post/pole and, at the top of the pole, flared in three directions to three treetops. It was actually some sort of "fan inverted-L." There was a lot of interaction between the elements, and the SWR "swayed" in the breeze as the wires moved around, but I was able to get it tuned up pretty well. The 40 and 30 wires slanted only a little, while the 80-meter wire sloped the most. The antenna was fed with 110 feet of CATV RG-6 quad shield, 12 turns of which were tightly wrapped around an FT-240-43 toroid, right at the feed point (about 24 inches above the ground).
This antenna would often hear stations that were inaudible on the doublet -- often with a HUGE increase in SNR --  but at 5 W, many of those stations couldn't hear me.
MAX power for now is 100 W.

New ideas: 

1. Replace the closet rod with a 20-foot aluminum mast and connect the "flared" wires to a single tap at the top of the mast. This will add vertical height keep the individual wires from running parallel down the wooden mast, potentially lessening the interaction and the "SWR swaying in the breeze" effect.

2. Add an SGC autocoupler to the feed point for maximum flexibility.
3. Add the autocoupler but leave only the 80-meter wire.
4. Add the autocoupler but use 2-3 switchable wires.
5. Eliminate the wires and add a 20-36 foot fiberglass pole to the top of the aluminum mast (with internal 6-gauge aluminum wire "whip") to make a 40-56 foot single radiating element.
BIG QUESTION: Can a Maxgain-type 40-foot fiberglass pole (deployed to 23-36 feet) be "walked up" during installation, or will it likely break? Weight-wise it should be fine, but I don't know how much "horizontal" it can handle. I can guy the top of the aluminum mast, etc, but I'd prefer the whippy part to not be/need guying. If a winter hurricane is approaching I can always tilt it down...
HIGH BANDS: K9YC's excellent presentation on the generally sucky results obtained by ground-mounted verticals on 20-10 has me wondering whether having the ability to cover those bands might be a complete waste. At 35 feet, the doublet is at least minimally high enough for normal patterns and gain, and a ground-mounted vertical probably won't match it? 

160 METERS: The SGC will at least tune the 80-meter wire into submission on 160 meters, and it has to work better than using a shack-mounted antenna tuner to load the 80-meter element on 160, right? I did that last year, but I was too scared to calculate the insane SWR-mismatch losses! Despite the horror, during a contest or two I managed to work a few Caribbean and Central/South American superstations on 160 with 5 W CW...and that mess of an antenna. Imagine how much better it will work without a 30-dB inline mismatch attenuator!
If I don't use the autocoupler I will have to load the 80-meter wire or the 40-56 foot single vertical element for use on 160. Because time is short, I'd probably have to use some sort of base loading, which is the least efficient way to do that (but perhaps the easiest). But, assuming the single vertical element, what about adding a capacitance hat at the 20-foot level (where the aluminum mast transitions to the fiberglass whip) instead of adding it at the very top (which isn't practical for me)? Someone told me that such a low capacitance hat would "divorce" the rest of the vertical, making the whole thing essentially a 20-foot vertical. Is that correct? Cuz I could easily add capacitance at that point if it might help.
Okay, clear as mud?  :)
As always, your thoughts are appreciated. What's the "killer" way to maximize this equation?

 But please, no comments regarding the need for Radio Arcala hardware, cuz I'm saving that for my next QTH! My budget is about $100, and I already have the radials, main support post, the aluminum tubing, the ferrite ring, the feed line, the autocoupler, etc. I don't have the fiberglass mast, however, and that costs about $100... :)
Regards,
--Kirk, NT0Z  Rochester, MN
  
My book, "Stealth Amateur Radio," is now available from www.stealthamateur.com and on the Amazon Kindle (soon)