I took the time today to install the new radio, a Yaesu FTM-100DR.

Due to this angle, it looks like it’s closer to my leg than it really is.

Although my truck is a 2007 model and has nearly 160K miles on it, and it’s hardly pristine, it was still pretty hard to take a holesaw to the roof. However, it finally has a properly installed NMO antenna mount and I can return the mag mount to temporary use.

The sharp-eyed will note that the dirt ring left by the mag mount is off center. The new antenna is very carefully centered. The coax remains hidden until it comes out under the dashboard.

Power was very basic, direct to the battery.

Once I had it up and verified that I could hit a nearby repeater, I used RT Systems FTM-100 programmer to fill in the memories with a bulk picked list of repeaters from RepeaterBook, which FTM-100 does natively. It’s definitely the easiest way to program a radio, though I am somewhat saddened that you must buy a separate program for each type of radio you might own. In any case, I sorted and grouped together the machines I frequent in the first few channels, then sorted the rest by callsign. The software can work with either a data cable or an SD card, which for me today was the best way to handle it. I could take my laptop out to the truck, but writing to the SD card and reading that into the radio was very quick and easy.