Its a LILYGO T3S3 (a module focused on handheld use) stuck into a housing I modeled myself and 3d printed out of ASA plastic. It has some Chinese "high gain" 915MHz antenna inside the grain silo looking part, which is oversize to prevent too much signal reflection/distortion from the plastic being too close to the antenna. Its powered by 18ga alarm system wire that I draped down the roof to a 5v power supply on the deck. And since I'm renting, non permanent modifications only, thus the clamp to the vent pipe.
Its what I had, just to get started. Quickly realized I needed to be on my roof to get any good connections in my node-sparse area haha.
So far it's working well, I have 13 consistent mesh connections with 3 direct connections, when before I would previously only get spotty connections to the mesh at all from inside my house.
I'll buy some better base station hardware later, once I put one up at my girlfriend's house a few miles away....
Depends on the orientation of the gain. Most "high gain" antennas are still omnidirectional, they're just focusing the signal out into a horizontal ring, like so:
More dB, and you get a flatter donut with more horizontal reach at the expense of vertical reception. Low-gain antennas reception area starts to approach a sphere, so those don't need to pointed up for best signal as much as higher-gain omnidirectional antennas.
Directional antennas are the ones that need to be pointed at something specific, as they have more of a cone of effect depending on the dB: