so i've been putting this off for like 6 months but i finally got my IC-2300H mounted in the cab of my F-150. ran the power leads direct to the battery with a fuse close to the battery like everyone says to do, and its actually pretty clean looking if i do say so myself. antenna is a Tram 1185 on a NMO mount i drilled into the roof which was terrifying by the way, no going back from that lol.

anyway the radio seems to work fine, hitting the local repeater no problem, but i'm getting this weird alternator whine through the audio that gets louder when i rev the engine. ive seen people mention ferrite chokes and stuff but im not really sure where to start. also wondering if my antenna placement is ok — its kind of toward the rear of the roof, maybe 8 inches from the back edge. wasnt sure if center would have been better or if it matters much on VHF. any help appreciated, still pretty new to mobile stuff.

The alternator whine thing is super common and honestly a bit of a rite of passage with mobile installs haha. First thing i'd check before buying anything is whether your power leads are twisted together along their length — running the positive and negative parallel and twisted together helps a lot with noise pickup. Also make sure your radio chassis has a good clean ground directly to the vehicle chassis, not just relying on the negative power lead.

If that doesnt sort it out, a noise filter inline on the power leads usually does the trick. Astatic and a few others make them, you can find em for like 15-20 bucks. Some people swear by ferrite cores on the coax near the radio too. As for the antenna placement, toward the rear is fine for mobile VHF, honestly its not gonna make a huge difference in practice. Centered roof would be slightly better theoretically but you'd need a really perfect ground plane and most trucks arent that anyway. Youll be fine on that repeater either way.

yeah i had the exact same whine on my Yaesu in my Tacoma, drove me nuts for weeks. turned out my ground wire from the radio to the chassis was going to kind of a crappy spot under the dash. moved it to a bolt that actually went to bare metal on the firewall and most of the whine just went away. worth checking before you buy a bunch of filters and stuff.