Dipoles for all directions
The good thing about a dipole is it has good gain off the broadside with a broad beamwidth, almost 90 degrees. This bandwidth is between the 3 dB points. Can’t hardly tell 3 dB. After that the signal drops maybe 10 dB directly off the ends. Other antennas can get a couple more dB off the front but that is ALWAYS at the expense of beamwidth and creates more or deeper nulls. In my opinion there is no single antenna better for general purpose amateur operating than a dipole. A better antenna requires a tower and a rotator. Such an antenna would be a Yagi, but a two element Yagi only has a few dB gain over a dipole. The rule of thumb being that you have to double the size of the array to get 3dB of gain. So the big deal with Yagi antennas is you can rotate them to focus your power where you want it. Again at the expense of beamwidth. I found myself always turning my antenna to point it in the right direction because it had such a narrow beamwidth! Some years ago after working a 10 me...