so ive been running a mag mount dual bander on my truck for about two years now and honestly its fine but i keep reading that NMO is the way to go if you actually care about performance. my issue is im a little nervous about drilling into the roof of a relatively new truck, its a 2021 f150 and i dont want to make a mess of it or have water getting in later.

the mag mount sits on the roof right now and i get into the local repeaters fine, occasionally have issues on the 70cm side when im further out but i dont know if thats the antenna, the radio, or just the repeater being finicky. someone at the club told me the ground plane on a mag mount is never as good as a proper NMO through the roof and that explains the UHF dropouts. makes sense to me in theory but i havent actually measured anything.

has anyone gone through the drilling process on a newer truck and regretted it or is it basically a non issue if you do it right? also wondering if a lip mount on the door or trunk edge would be a reasonable middle ground or if those things introduce their own problems with the antenna being off center and all that.

drilled NMO on three different vehicles over the years and honestly once you do it right the first time you dont think twice about it. the key is getting a proper weather tight mount, i use Larsen mounts and have never had a water issue. just make sure you're going through a spot without a headliner brace underneath, shine a flashlight up there first or tap around to find solid vs hollow spots.

lip mounts work ok but yeah being off-center on the roof does affect your radiation pattern, probably not enough to matter for hitting a local repeater 10 miles away but if you care about performance its not ideal. and some lip mounts have a longer cable path which can pick up noise from the door area depending on your vehicle. for a truck id just go through the roof center and be done with it, you can always fill the hole with a rubber grommet if you ever sell the truck and want to remove it.

i ran a lip mount on my jeep for a while and the RF got into everything, my radio would pick up noise whenever i ran the blower fan. might have been a grounding issue with my specific install but it was a pain to track down. eventually just went NMO through the roof and all that went away. cant say for sure the lip mount caused it but the timing was suspicious.