so anyway after about three weekends of messing around i finally got my FT-7900 mounted and running decently in my F-150. the whole thing started because my old mag mount kept falling off on the highway which was getting embarrassing, so i decided to just do it right this time with a proper through-hole mount on the cab roof.

drilling that hole was nerve wracking, not gonna lie. watched probably six youtube videos before i finally just committed and did it. used a diamond NR770HNMO and the signal difference compared to the mag mount is honestly night and day, i can hit repeaters i couldnt even hear before.

power is running direct to the battery with a 20 amp fuse right at the battery terminal, which i know is how you're supposed to do it but i always just used the cigarette lighter before like a dummy. no more RFI from the alternator getting into the audio either which was driving me crazy.

only thing im still not happy with is the mic routing, i've got the cord running kind of awkwardly across the center console. anybody done a neat solution for this? thinking about a speaker mic clipped somewhere on the visor maybe but not sure how the audio quality would be on it.

congrats on getting it sorted, a real mount makes such a huge difference. for the mic cable i just used some of those little adhesive wire clips you can get at any hardware store and routed mine along the edge of the dash under the trim panel. took maybe 20 minutes and looks totally factory. some guys run a speaker mic to a shoulder strap or clip it to the visor like you said and it works fine, audio is usually good enough for FM repeater work. the Kenwood speaker mics especially seem to have decent elements in them. just dont go too far away from your mouth or you sound like you're calling from a cave.

i had the same RFI problem with my old install, turned out half of it was a bad ground and the other half was the power cable running too close to the radio receiver section. moving the power cable to the other side of the center console actually fixed most of it for me. also yeah speaker mic on the visor works great, ive been doing that for two years. occasionally it picks up wind noise with the window down but otherwise no complaints.