radar detector

Guys,
I was wondering if someone here could recommend a good portable (AA or AAA powered) radar detector.
Thanks in advance
Jim

 

I guess the best battery one would be the escort passport. But you do give up range for the battery operation I would think.

 

The best battery powered would be the escort solo. I don't know how it compares but I have the escort passport, which is wired, It gives me plenty of warning and saves me all the time.

www.escortradar.com

 

I'd have to say it would be a Valentine 1....but it is going to take quite a few AA cells & I can make you the adapter to run it

 

Don't waste your money. LIDAR and RADAR technology is always one step ahead. I'm a police officer and RADAR instructor.

 

You've tested the Valentine One against LIDAR and RADAR and found it ineffective? I love mine..

 

This logic is plain incorrect....so what if the technology is always ahead? (assuming you are correct). If my V1 can "save" me from tickets 30% of the time I have an "encounter" with a laser or radar enforcement, then does the V1 offer me "value"...absolutely! I have had many "saves" thus far, and while I do not count on the V1 to always save me, it offers valuable information. Worth it.

Yes, if I am the only car on the road, and come into a "trap" I will likely get nailed and have no reaction time....but even in moderate traffic, I have picked up both radar and laser warnings from surprising distances, as they monitor traffic ahead of me.

Back on topic, most of the cordless units suffer greatly in performance. Buy the V1, and carry the adapter, it really isn't that much hassle....

 

While there is great technology out there most police do not use it, at least where I travel. Every day I pick up the state police and other police sitting on the side of the road with their KA radar on full time. They could do it other ways to make it harder to pick up but for the most part they don't. When they use it on particular cars, or on instant on I pick it up about a mile ahead in small blips. Also I pick up small blips of X. It seems that KA shows up as weak X signals when it is bouncing around way down the road.

Lidar jammers are completely legal as they use IR light and not radio waves. They would have to be controlled by the FDA and not the FCC. The new blinder unit has proven very effective the escort unit is good to but does not jam every gun like the blinder does.

Radar jammers do not work from what I have seen, the passive units do pretty much nothing and the active units are illegal IIRC.

Lidar detectors are not very good because of the small focused beam from the lidar unit.

www.radarbusters.com has some interesting tests and results.

I use an escort passport and have been very happy with it. I am planning on switching to a Valentine + a lidar jammer or the totally installed escort unit with lidar jammers. I am getting tired of having my detector in my windshield.

I have friends that are police officers. They always tell me that detectors are useless. I think they are programmed to say this. While there are many ways to catch speeders like using an airplane to time cars(which has gotten me once) or vascar in cars they don't use these methods often where I am. My detector saves me every day of the week I think thats pretty good for a piece of useless equipment.

 

Back on topic, I just looked at radarbusters.com. They say that the bel cordless unit is just as good as the escort. They say they are both owned by escort now. I don't know how true that is but if they are testing the same you may be able to get the bel for less money and get good performance.

The cordless detectors have always come in lower than corded detectors in all the tests. That is why I went with the corded unit.

 

If you get stopped and your radar detector doesn't go off find out if the police are using the Bee III from MPH. It has "POP" mode where it sends out radar signals in such short burst that some detectors can not pick it up. But this thing is so inaccurate in this mode that the manufacturer has a disclaimer in the operation manual saying that citations should not be issued based on information collected in "POP" mode.

 

Your right, but if radar is used the way it should be you can have a unit all you want and with proper traing and using the radar unit the way it should be used, I will get you every time. Further you CANNOT beat LIDAR/LASER, the chance of me putting that beam of light, which is about the size of a pencil eraser, exactly where your sensor is to sound off your unit, is crazy. I have used LASER as far away as 4,700ft. and got people. I'm not downing anyone to each his own, my opinion for $200-$400.00 for a radar detector, I would use other means. Less money and more effective. Good luck to all the speeders-We will be watching.(HAHA)

 

Sounds like you need some more training then, because while laser is indeed much harder to detect, there is the reflection aspect. Plus, there is no way in hell that laser is the width of a pencil when targeting people at any real distance. You'd have to have to have a rifle scope to target any car, and be an excellent shot. It's not the big size of radar, but it isn't a pencil width either.

 

My state trooper friends tell me that the laser signal is in a round circle about 6-8" wide. They like to hit front plates as it makes a good reflective target for the beam. I am expecting more and more states to require front plates as speed enforcement generates a lot of money for them.

The jammer heads are mounted on top of and on the sides of the front and rear plates so that they can imitate the reflected beam and mix in with it.

I've talked to 4 different police officers who have had their lidar units jammed by lidar jammers/shifters installed in cars. Most guns display error when they encounter the IR pulses from the jammers.

Lidar can be beat and it is has been many times but until legislation is made to outlaw the use of IR laser jammers there isn't anything that can be done. I don't see this happening. Active Radar jammers were made illegal because of the interference they caused with other things like airport radar devices. In order for them to be effective they had to b very powerful. This is not the case with lidar jammers. They have rows of LEDs that put out invisible IR light. They don't interfere with anything but the lidar gun and they only turn on when hit.

The cost really isn't that much. A good Lidar jammer and radar detection system will be about $1500. If i saves me the hassle of getting stopped, going to court with my lawyers and everything else associated with tickets it is worth it to me.

If you are getting speeds of cars from 4700 feet away that would open up a lot of doubt in court. Do you keep that car in your scope the entire time until he is stopped so that you make sure it is the same car? People have had their tickets thrown out after getting tickets from being timed in airplanes. The officer in the plane admitted that there were times he did not maintain eye contact with the cars he timed so it is possible the cars pulled over were not the ones he timed.

 

From www.valentine1.com:

"The actual [laser] beam is only several feet wide at 500 feet, but "aiming wobble" introduced by the human holding the bulky gun make the detectable beam at least three times larger. Even without the wobble, it covers most of the roadway after a mile. This means it is actually much easier to find a fragment of the beam at greater distances from the laser trap. At short ranges, the beam may be so concentrated that a detector mounted away from the aim point on the vehicle may not be able to pick up enough stray energy to activate an alarm."

 

If it is several feet wide that would trip the detectors on the jammers easier.

 

Laser units DO have scopes on them. Are you familiar with a laser unit?

 

Laser beams DO NOT widen or get bigger the farther the distance. GUys instead of listening to friends or going by word of mouth, maybe get some training on laser and radar units and you will know first hand what they can do and cant do. I have had that training and I am a instructor. Have NEVER lost a traffic citation in 9 years of law enforcement.

 

Are there not more important things the police can do with their time than stopping speeders? This is strickly a revenue source.

 

Yes but those things are more dangerous and do not generate revenue.

I am really getting tired of the police departments in my area. They are always asking for tax increases and the more money they get the more they are doing nothing. I see groups of them hanging out in car parks. I see teams of state troopers doing inspection sticker checkpoints and speed traps. All while there is known drug activity in certain areas that is not dealt with at all. Why aren't the police there parked on the side of the street instead of being parked at starbucks?

 

Revenue source?? Maybe in GA, I can only speak for MD but whether I write $1 or $1000 in tickets all that money goes to the state general fund to pay for schools, roads, etc. I don't nor does the agency I work for get any of this money. I don't get commission either. I look at it as saving lives, I'm a accident reconstructionist and see what happens first hand when you get decapitated from speeding or not wearing your seatbelt.

 

Ask yourself are those guys off duty. Did they just spend the wee morning hours protecting your homes from burgulars and decided to stop and get acup of coffee. The point is you don't know, but you what to judge them and assume they are goofing off. Until you have walked in those shoes and wore that badge don't judge us. I am part of a Traffic unit. My main priority is to write tickets and accident reports. It's so easy to sit back and assume you know what is going on., but you know what they say when you assume. You make an ASS out of U and ME.

 

Not wearing your seatbelt is stupid IMO. They deserve a ticket. Drinking and Driving should have a much harsher penalty IMO also. RIDE checks I think save lives.

Stopping someone for going 78 in a 70 doesn't stop a damn thing. And while the person is pulled over, only another 150 cars pass doing 78 or more and don't seem to be slowing down. The next day everyone is going 78 again. Sorry, I don't see that as saving lives. I see that as meeting your quota.

My friend just got a ticket for 31 in a 25. Yeah, he was really endangerous a lot of people.

 

I've asked them myself if they are on or off duty. I was told that it isn't any of my concern and to leave. That isn't the way you talk to taxpayers when you are on TV asking them for more money.

I think speed enforcement is pretty useless. I drive the same interstate every day. I see the majority of cars going well over the speed limit. The cops get a few and the rest continue speeding by. Whether traffic is going 70 or 85 there really is not too much danger there until something abruptly disturbs the flow. What usually causes problems is the trucks in the left lane doing 65, why aren't they stopped, and the state troopers flying around cars, passing in the break down lane or the median to stop that one car he clocked. I think they need to ask themselves what is a greater risk to public safety. I know a few state troopers, I've said this to all of them with no reply.
It does not matter how many tickets you give out. The speeders speed. If you look at all the repeat offenders of traffic crimes it is obvious that citations do not really deter those who want to drive that way.

Money and attention should be given to designing new driver education and qualification guidelines.

Here are some interesting articles I have read.
http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/a-facdec.html
http://www.tarcanfel.org/~hutchins/speed/speed.htm
http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/why-prev.html
http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/sl-irrel.html
http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/a-slmatr.html
http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/conn-acd.html

Here is one from your state.
http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/dotst-md.html


I'm not trying to bash police. I agree with some things they do. The drunk driver roadblocks are a great thing. I just think that what I see them doing most of the time is pretty much pointless. There are so many crime filled areas with no police presence. Drug crimes and thefts are overlooked.
I feel that until these problems are given serious attention there is no excuse to be wasting resources by putting police on the side of the road with radar guns. I can drive two blocks from my post office and watch drug deals happening in front of me. If those four cops that are a mile away with their radar guns were driving around that area a lot of that activity would drop. It is a proven fact that drug problems lead people to commit more crimes including violent crimes and murder. I think that should be a daily priority instead of having speed traps.

 

I'm familiar with information learned from outside a classroom for sure. Obviously you aren't. Do you really expect me to believe, that a measuring unit the size of a pencil can accurately be used to hit a high-speed moving vehicle, the size of a license plate, on a consistent basis?

Really? Here is one of your fellow officer's statements:

"The unit that I am certified in has a beam width of approximately 3' at 1000'" (http://www.speedingticketcentral.com/radar-detector.html)

More (http://www.snooper.co.uk/glossary_of_terms.htm):
"The generated light energy has a wavelength of approx. 900 nanometers, with a beam divergence of 3 milliradians, equal to a beam width of about 3 m (or ft) at 1000 m (ft). "

More (http://www.traffic-school.org/traffic-violation-questions-2.html):
"The beam width is only around 4 feet wide at half a mile and there is very little scatter for the detector to pick up. "

More (http://www.radar.co.nz/nz/report5.html):
"The shape of the laser beam is very different to that of radar. First of all it is not a pencil beam, as many would have you believe. The beam starts from a small point at the laser gun and slowly fans out the further it travels from the source. The beam is approximately 1 to 2 feet in diameter at 300 metres, and increases in width and height the further it travels. (4 to 6) feet wide at 600 metres distance."

More (http://www.summervillepolice.com/Traffic.html):
"The beam width is approx. 3 feet wide at 1,000 feet..."

More (http://www.ukspeedtraps.co.uk/speed1.htm):
"laser's tight beam-width (two feet at 800 feet)"

More (http://pages.quicksilver.net.nz/geoffm/radar/Radarfaq.htm):
"The beam width is only around 4 feet wide at half a mile "

Laser is light obviously, and thus prone to reflection, and distortion, beyond it's initial beam (which is NOT pencil thin, it DOES widen, and does make it detectable). I'm not going to say a laser gun isn't hard to detect, I'm not going to say it's impossible to avoid it's detection either.