Owing to the physical geography of my location operating on 432 MHz is difficult
and, consequently, an "also ran" band. Not wishing to "waste"
space on the outside mast I run a rotatable loft mounted aerial - far from
ideal. With this solution there are obviously size constraints and currently
I run a twelve element. Being surrounded by a domestic broadcast FM aerial,
a cold water tank and the central heating header tank the radiation pattern
is…….interesting.
In storage I have an old J Beam 18 element aerial which, from memory, is rather long (probably too big to fit on the outside mast) and a slightly damaged J Beam 48 element Multibeam that, at about five feet in length, could crown the outside mast. One of many projects on the list is to get hold of some feeder and try the Multibeam outside to see if there is a significant improvement.
Watch this space.
For local FM contacts I use a homebrew colinear cobbled out of an old /M aerial, a diecast box and radials fashioned from an old TV aerial element.