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To any reasonable person, absolutely nothing. Here's an example. One of the directors in the company I work for ordered an electric power washer that was almost $400. It didn't work under load, so he contacted tech support and he went through all the steps he was told to do, still nothing. Call ended with them overnight a new one and told to toss the first one in the trash. I was asked to take a quick look at it and found the neutral wire under a screw that was never tightened. I looked at the tag and guess where it was made? I tightened the screw and they now have two power washers. No quality control and won't even take the defective one back to repair it. This is the true definition of disposable goods. Goes to show you the high profit margin.

I have done handheld antenna testing and it's not that easy. I wouldn't recommend an SWR meter, either. You can't replicate the ground plane of the chassis and the effects of having the radio in your hand, which makes taking the measurements difficult. The closest I have come without literally building a sampling circuit onto the radio was by making small metal table into a ground plane, mounting an S.A connector on it with proper length cable between the base of the antenna and the VNA. Depending on the cable type, you will want the cable to be almost 7 feet (6.9) to be sure you are outside of the near field while testing.

I mean, not really a surprise at that size, but I appreciate that they rate it honestly.

I was answering his question, not baiting you.

I too have an F150 and the power sunroof is not an issue. Plenty of room for an NMO mount.

Really? If one's motives are honest they wouldn't need to explain themselves. If you feel the burning desire to continue this petty nonsense please feel free to PM and we can discuss this in private. I won't discuss this in an open forum as I will be the one to get reprimanded, not you. No further bait will be taken.

In my opinion, his repeated statements about ”Chinese radios” as poorly constructed was an attempt to associate the quality of the radios to the race of the people who manufactured them.

i think its something to do with 'China'

And you probably paid less for the rack.. I have one of the 3rd brake light antenna mounts and knowing what i know now, i wouldn't pay $150 bucks. It is a quality milled piece of metal with a decent coax but it is a waste of money at the end of the da. I like the rack idea. Never thought of that.

I considered buy one of those mounts for my 2020 F-150. It too had a sunroof that precluded installing a regular NMO mount. I installed a "Back Rack", which I use to haul canoes, ladders and lumber anyway, and mounted two antennas on the vertical bars at the sides. VHF on one side, UHF on the other. The Back Rack is bonded to the truck bed and the bed is bonded to the cab. I brought the cables in under the rear seat, under the carpet to the front seats, where my radios are hung. Works 'OK', but not quite a well as the NMO in the center of the roof on my last truck.

I got a chuckle out of the rating of the Diamond SRH805S. You might have noticed that they rate the antenna gain as -2dB. That means a loss of RF radiation. Diamond says: So, basically, Diamond says the SRH805S will perform 2dB worse than the OEM antenna

I have a new-to-me F150 Lariat with SuperCrew cab. It's a 2014. The front console seems pretty full, though there's a "SYNC" panel at the base of the front panel that may have space behind it; I'm not sure. It's possible I could find room under the seat if I use a detachable faceplate style radio such as a KG1000G Plus (GMRS) or the KG -UV980P (amateur). I'm looking for examples of successful installations that seem not too intrusive or not to have that "I bolted this thing to my dashboard" look. Additionally, examples of antenna mounting would be useful. I already can't park the truck in the garage, but would prefer not becoming so tall that I also can't pull into commercial or municipal parking garages. On my 95 Bronco a hood lip-mount works great because the cowling aft of the hood is also metal, so I'm able to achieve a good ground plane. But on the F150 the cowling aft of the hood is plastic, so the ground plane would be poor with that type of mount. Cab-top is probably ideal from a functionality standpoint, but a compromise in terms of what kind of antenna I can put up there (it would pretty much be the Ghost, or frequent swapping to accommodate height obstructions).

Ouch, 359.65?!

What does race have to do with this?

As mentioned, testing of an HT antenna is nearly impossible to get completely accurate results. It should also be noted that sometimes a "better" antenna will cause the radio to perform worse due to RF saturation. That being said, for the APX, the Motorola antenna will work the best for that radio.

Agree my new work truck is a Nissan Frontier. Trying to jam 4 radios in it was a joke. In the end I had to go with remote head, dual heads to control it all.

I tried one of these on a SAR members vehicle, 2021 3500HD DEnali with the sliding roof as yours. It was on a trunked system and on the system with a 1/4 wave worked ok. Simplex was misserable. Since then I dropped 2 NMO mounts in the roof and that mount was given away. There is plenty enough room for a NMO on each side. He runs a 1/4 wave VHF and UHF. At times he does swap out to the Larsen NMO puck on UHF but 90% of the time the 1/4 wave is on the truck.

The GMN1 gmrs radio is a similar form factor but even smaller. I was wondering if it has been discontinued?. It was a tiny little thing. Think it was a Retevis. I looked all over internet for it to buy and can’t find them in the usual places.

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I recently bought a pair of these radios. They work fine for simplex. I’ve tried several local repeaters and the radios key up the carrier but the audio doesn’t work. As in I can receive audio but not transmit audio, all while the repeater seems to receive the signal.

so what radio do you run?

There are counterfeits of almost everything that is good. It is possible that you bought fakes. There are websites that show how to tell the difference between the legit Nagoyas and Diamonds. Directly speaking of the fake Diamond antennas, they are obvious if you have had a real one in your hand and know what the real ones look like. Going back to your testing. You did not mention testing across the frequencies/bands for each antenna. Most usually favor one side of the band more than the other. Ideally they would be tuned for center, but that is less than optimal if you end up using it primarily on one end of the band or the other

Well yea, that does change the picture.. i can imagine the moon roof will add more complications to the headliner removal. You may have to drop the whole headliner because the moonroof will not let you tilt down the headline form one side. You also dont want to route the coax along either outer edges of the headline because that will impede the air bag function. There are front fender mount options that mount under the hood and wrap around the hood by the cowl area. I had a jeep mount that worked well for that. The Mag mount works well too until you get into a good rain storm.. Don't ask me how i know that one. Good Luck. defiantly visit YouTube and see if you can get any ideas on difficulty for your headliner. It could be easier then you think and vis a versa. Good luck

And using cables with the Prolific chip can be problematic to get running on Mac's. It's easier to deal with Prolific drivers on Windoze computers than to get them to work on Mac's. I haven't even bothered trying to run any version of Windows in VMWare on my M4 Mac. I kept my Intel based 2108 Mac around for that.

I fully understand not wanting to drill holes into your vehicle. I have yet to get the courage up to drill my 2023 Ford Escape. Plus I don't feel confident removing the headliner with all of the curtain air bags. Having a sun/moon roof definitely restricts where you can drill a hole for a NMO mount. If you get acceptable results with a mag mount at the back edge of the cab then the third brake light mount will work for you. You will still have to deal with pulling at least part of the headliner down to run the coax though. Only you can decide if the third brake light mount is worth the money, time, and effort. If it was me, I would look into a NMO mount since you have to remove the headliner for either one.