The other day I was on the highway and came up on a patrol car from behind. My detector went nuts (massive Ka-band emissions) but as soon as I got in front of him, it went silent. Did he just turn it off (or into instant-on mode) or do they have some kind of directional masking?
Secondly, i got pulled over a little while back and the officer was pretty cool. We chatted about the truck and he brought out his gun and plugged it into my cig. lighter to test my detector. In instant on mode, my Uniden never even chirped. In full-on mode, it took about 4 seconds of exposure before the detector started to sound (at highway speeds, i'd be nailed already with a 4 sec. lag). I'm wondering if this is just my detector or if its a larger problem with the state of detector technology today. (for instance, valentine makes both detectors and guns).
If anyone has technical knowledge of how this stuff works, I'd love to hear about it.
Also, if anyone has a Val-1 and can share their impressions that would be great. I'm thinking of selling my Uniden to get a Val-1 but I dont know if the improvement is worth the price tag.

 

I'm no expert on detectors but with radar waves traveling at 186,000 miles per sec I would hope it would react a whole lot quicker than 4 secs. Maybe a call to the manufacturer to see what they think. Unusual the taxman was nice enough to demonstrate that for you. They usually love to give you written proof that it doesn't work.

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Red 99.5 Lightning,#0975,Born 5/6/99...Adopted 5/27/99 Chipped w/SuperChip Flipchip chip, Mobil 1

 

With those radars, they just hit the LOCK button when they got you, and no radar helps then.

 

I'm certainly no expert on the mechanics of a radar gun, but I did use them to collect taxes for many years........Hey, what can I say, someone has to do it. In the past I have used both K-band as well as X-band systems with excellent results, although they are, under the right conditions, detectable for some distance. However the new laser systems are nearly fool-proof.
All detector manufacturers claim excellent ranges of sensitivity, but I wish I had a penny for every ticket I issued to drivers armed with detectors. Let's face it, our best defense is to slow down, and pick our spots to exercise our toys.

 

As for you getting sound from the back and none from the front, he probably had the side mounted radar pointing out the back.

As for your radar not picking up a signal for 4 seconds it could be the mechanism inside your detector which filters out potentially bad signals. In reality, getting a signal which is that strong, and that close is not normal and your detector might be trying to decide what signal it is...also, keep in mind that a non laser radar emits a signal which look like the circles made from a stone thrown in water, being really close, the arc on the circle is very small, something which your radar might avoid as noise.

If he uses laser, and gets in that close, it could also fool your radar because it might not pick up a beam that small. Regardless of what you think, when you shine a laser, the signal gets bigger and looses intensity as it gets farther away, just like any other light would, and being that close, your radar was probably only reading a very small signal and had to monitor it for a period of time before deciding it was in fact a signal. It might have even finally picked up a refraction of the close laser as opposed to the laser itself.

Cops know the limitation of the radar gun, and so does your detector. It was programed to avoid ATM transmissions over normal radar band because it uses algorithms which assume that your not standing 2 inches from the source of the radar itself.

0.02!

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David
'99 F150 XLT SC, STYLESIDE
4X4 ORP 5.4L, AUTOMATIC,
139wb, Rhino, K&N,
BugGuard, RainGuards
Superchip

 

Kansas definitely uses instant on as my celebrity co-driver found out at 2:00 A.M on the way to Heartland Raceway (fortunately no ticket for the lap dog).

There really is only one detector worth owning: Valentine. Check out any of the bulleting boards (i.e., BMWs, Porsches, etc.)The directionability is no gimick and quickly becomes something you won't want to be without.

 

Ditto on the Valentine One. I purchased a Val-1 almost 7 years ago when I bought a Syclone from my neighbor. Still using it today on my Lightning. Never a single problem. Very impressive performance. Extremely high quality unit.

I have owned various brands/types of radar and laser detectors for over 25 years. My first one was the original Escort. A much higher quality unit than the Escorts of today. Of course, that was when Mike Valentine was president of Cincinatti Microwave, the parent of Escort. Now he has his own company and is once again producing the best, state-of-the-art radar/laser detection instruments you can buy.

Bite the bullet and shell out the bucks for a Valentine. It's worth it.

Mike Philpott
'99.5 Black Lightning

 

I've had all the escorts and passports but my V-1 is by far superior to any of them and definitely worth every penny. Had it for about 3 years now. When it goes off and you glance at it, you know whether the radar is in front of you or behind you. I love it.

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98 reg cab 4x4 orp 4.6 waiting on 2000 delivery