Thomas Anderson

the roof hole fear is real but once you do it youll wonder why you waited so long. i drilled mine about 4 years ago on my tacoma and used a Larsen NMO mount with the gasket and sealer, never had a single water issue. the coax routing through the headliner isnt that bad either if you have a plastic trim tool to pop the panels off gently. i ran mine down the a-pillar and under the dash — took maybe an afternoon and looks factory clean now.
the mag mount ground plane problem you're describing on fiberglass is a real thing btw, that noise you're hearing is probably RF getting back into the rig because the counterpoise is garbage. drilling is really the answer if you want it to actually perform the way that antenna is supposed to.

haha yeah mine was terrible too, i called CQ on 40m like two days after getting my general and some DX station came back to me and i panicked and just started reading my callsign over and over. the guy eventually gave up i think. took me a few weeks before i felt comfortable just having a normal sounding contact. dont sweat it, everyone sounds awkward at first and the regulars on repeaters have heard it all a hundred times

yeah the touchscreen thing caught me too when i first got mine, i think ive got like two years on it now. you kind of learn to hover rather than rest but it does get annoying during a contest when youre moving fast. someone on here mentioned you can lock certain parts of the screen but i never bothered to dig into that.
the waterfall point is real though. i came from a much older rig with no spectrum display at all and it felt like going from a paper map to GPS honestly. 17m openings especially, that band is so variable and the visual really helps you see whats happening in realtime rather than guessing.
what antenna are you running for 160? im curious what grumpy looks like, mine tunes up ok but i suspect im just not getting out as well as i should be on that band.