so anyway i finally got it working after like three weekends of messing around. went with a Yaesu FTM-300DR in the truck and honestly the hardest part wasnt the radio itself it was figuring out where to run the power cable without it looking like a disaster in the cab. ended up going under the carpet along the sill and straight to the battery with an inline fuse close to the battery like youre supposed to do. the antenna is a Diamond NR770HNMO on a NMO mount i drilled through the roof of the bed cover which i was kinda nervous about but it worked out fine. SWR came in under 1.5 across most of the 2m band so im calling that a win.

the reason it took so long is i kept going back and forth on whether to do a trunk lip mount or just drill. everyone online has opinions and half of them contradict each other. eventually just committed to drilling and im glad i did, no flexing or movement at all compared to my old mag mount situation.

if anyones on the fence about the FTM-300DR vs the 500D, i went with the 300 because i didnt need the extra power and the price difference was pretty significant. so far so good, hits all the local repeaters no problem and ive been having fun just driving around monitoring the county ARES net. anyway just wanted to share in case someone is going through the same decision paralysis i was

good job committing to the drill, seriously. i put off doing a proper NMO mount for almost two years because i kept telling myself id do it right eventually and in the meantime ran a mag mount that slid around constantly. finally drilled the roof of my jeep and it was one of those things where you wonder why you waited so long. the signal difference was noticeable too, probably because the ground plane was actually making proper contact instead of relying on whatever the mag was grabbing onto.

the FTM-300DR is a solid choice for mobile use, the display is easy to read at a glance which matters more than people think when youre actually driving. i had the older FTM-400 for years and eventually moved to the 500D mainly because i wanted more output on 70cm for hitting a distant repeater on my commute but honestly for most people 50 watts is plenty. sounds like you did the install the right way with the power cable routing too, a lot of folks underestimate how important it is to keep that run short and fused right at the source.

this is super helpful actually, im about to do almost the exact same thing in my car and was also going back and forth on the mount situation. one question though — did you have any trouble with the NMO mount leaking water through the hole? thats the one thing thats been making me hesitate, i live somewhere where it rains a lot and i dont want to deal with rust or water getting in