Thanks. Great tips. About 100 nodes names in Munich but some MQTT from wherever. Since most folks have several nodes it is probably not much more than 25 people perhaps. In attic because testing and lightening risk and because the standard mini antenna
worked absolutely fine in attic.
The upgrade to bigger antennae is just to compare them - all have the same attenuation from roof so comparison is valid and they all perform about the same. So I can choose which one to mount on chimney as a solar node (so no cable path to house and lightning risk).
I have a RAK node centrally already Solar node for top of tall building using the Waveshare D solar power manager - #5 by adingbatponder and all my nodes are client.
I can run an antenna with a 3 m coax cable no problems as in this build (Car node with external antenna which seems to perform fine) but of course keep it as short as possible for other nodes.
Nice idea to run only DC to attic