NoltaiR
April 20th, 2002, 02:46 AM
Well this place has been getting kinda dull around here the within the past few weeks so I decided to post a topic on something that I may be considering (for a second time) to get.
As the story goes, about 5 months after I turned 16 and got my driver's lisence, I did some reading around on the net about staying away from cops and escaping trouble and decided a dashboard mounted radar detector would be the single most defensive way to prevent myself from getting speeding tickets and to just have a good idea of when a cop might be lurking around. Now of coarse there are other ways (radar scramblers, detectors that run throughout your entire car) but the others seem to always be either too expensive or illegal.. and sometimes both.
So I went out and spent $60 at my local Sears and bought a Uniden (I believe it was a Uniden 67 or something with a similar name) that detected the K and X bands quite well, but suffered tremendously when detecting the superwide Ka band; all bands had the ability of displaying the strength of the signal based on how close the beeps were together. When I first bought it, however, my local law enforcement used the always-on guns which ran off of K band. As long as that was in place I could find cops over an eighth of a mile away, which was plenty time to slow down and follow the rules exactly. Then the cop would pass by and as his rear-aiming gun got farther away, the signal was less powerful until it was too far away and I would resume driving as usual.
During the month that I had this detector I saved myself from countless tickets and not to mention that I always had a better knowledge of what was going on around me because it could detect trains (which run off of a form of x band) and various emergency vehicles--specifically fire engines and ambulances. After about a month, something strange happened... I suddenly was unable to detect any radar coming from cop cars within city limits. Also there were new cop vehicles available.. the highway patrolmen and some city police were now driving F150s and Chevy Blazers that had been painted white and were given proper police sirens and lights, which was certainly a sight to behold for someone like me who had seen nothing except for cars from the late 80s which were constantly having to undergo repair due to age. Also a neighboring town which is within the same county, began to crack down on street racers and purchased 5 supercharged camero Z28s to be used for police work.
Anyways in the midst of all these new changes in our local law enforecement, I came up with the idea that possibly not all cop cars had been equiped yet with running radar. Well this excuse was good for the first week or so but after that amount of time of not detecting ANY k band radar, I became suspicious. So I returned my radar detector and bought a $100 uniden 87. I bought it because I thought it was actually more powerful, but after going home and reading the package, I found that the extra $40 had gone into paying for a new body design and making my detector talk rather than beep.
I didn't feel like going back so I tried it out. One week later I found out why I hadn't been detecting any cops. I was driving down a highway in town that had a speed limit of 45mph.. and I was driving 60mph. Then in the middle of a calming drive I here my detector go off for the first time in a couple weeks.. only this time it wasn't the K band, it was the Ka band which I had never picked up before. The Ka band showed up only for a second and the signal strength never got passed the first (weakest) bar so I figured it was a false alarm. I still slowed to 45 just to make sure.. and a few seconds later I see lights flashing in my rear view mirror.
Because I had a radar detector there was no chance of a warning.. but then again I had been told about that since I began driving. Also the cop wanted me to follow him to his car to sign some papers because not only was I speeding, I had an expired inspection sticker. And laying between the driver's seat and the passenger's seat was the reason I hadn't been able to detect the cars.. it was a handheld gun which run only on Ka superwide. The cops only use them when they visibly see a car moving faster than that other cars around it (because if everyone was speeding the cop wouldn't know which car it was because the gun only detects the speed of the fastest driver).
I returned my detector and used the cash from it along with a little extra to pay for my ticket which came out to be $210.
Now although the inner city cops have the handheld, the outer city patrol men stuck with the k band because it allowed them to hide behind trees or similar objects and shoot a long distance all the time.. and the cop could even take a nap and just wake up when his buzzer went off saying someone had passed by that was speeding.
Anyways it has been a good while since I last had that detector and I was considering buying another one (a better brand though) this august when I buy my new car (which will probably be a camero or a turbocharged honda civic).
I was just wanting to know if any of you had stories about radar detectors or could give me a few pointers on which brands are good and which aren't useful for anything other than to take your money.
As the story goes, about 5 months after I turned 16 and got my driver's lisence, I did some reading around on the net about staying away from cops and escaping trouble and decided a dashboard mounted radar detector would be the single most defensive way to prevent myself from getting speeding tickets and to just have a good idea of when a cop might be lurking around. Now of coarse there are other ways (radar scramblers, detectors that run throughout your entire car) but the others seem to always be either too expensive or illegal.. and sometimes both.
So I went out and spent $60 at my local Sears and bought a Uniden (I believe it was a Uniden 67 or something with a similar name) that detected the K and X bands quite well, but suffered tremendously when detecting the superwide Ka band; all bands had the ability of displaying the strength of the signal based on how close the beeps were together. When I first bought it, however, my local law enforcement used the always-on guns which ran off of K band. As long as that was in place I could find cops over an eighth of a mile away, which was plenty time to slow down and follow the rules exactly. Then the cop would pass by and as his rear-aiming gun got farther away, the signal was less powerful until it was too far away and I would resume driving as usual.
During the month that I had this detector I saved myself from countless tickets and not to mention that I always had a better knowledge of what was going on around me because it could detect trains (which run off of a form of x band) and various emergency vehicles--specifically fire engines and ambulances. After about a month, something strange happened... I suddenly was unable to detect any radar coming from cop cars within city limits. Also there were new cop vehicles available.. the highway patrolmen and some city police were now driving F150s and Chevy Blazers that had been painted white and were given proper police sirens and lights, which was certainly a sight to behold for someone like me who had seen nothing except for cars from the late 80s which were constantly having to undergo repair due to age. Also a neighboring town which is within the same county, began to crack down on street racers and purchased 5 supercharged camero Z28s to be used for police work.
Anyways in the midst of all these new changes in our local law enforecement, I came up with the idea that possibly not all cop cars had been equiped yet with running radar. Well this excuse was good for the first week or so but after that amount of time of not detecting ANY k band radar, I became suspicious. So I returned my radar detector and bought a $100 uniden 87. I bought it because I thought it was actually more powerful, but after going home and reading the package, I found that the extra $40 had gone into paying for a new body design and making my detector talk rather than beep.
I didn't feel like going back so I tried it out. One week later I found out why I hadn't been detecting any cops. I was driving down a highway in town that had a speed limit of 45mph.. and I was driving 60mph. Then in the middle of a calming drive I here my detector go off for the first time in a couple weeks.. only this time it wasn't the K band, it was the Ka band which I had never picked up before. The Ka band showed up only for a second and the signal strength never got passed the first (weakest) bar so I figured it was a false alarm. I still slowed to 45 just to make sure.. and a few seconds later I see lights flashing in my rear view mirror.
Because I had a radar detector there was no chance of a warning.. but then again I had been told about that since I began driving. Also the cop wanted me to follow him to his car to sign some papers because not only was I speeding, I had an expired inspection sticker. And laying between the driver's seat and the passenger's seat was the reason I hadn't been able to detect the cars.. it was a handheld gun which run only on Ka superwide. The cops only use them when they visibly see a car moving faster than that other cars around it (because if everyone was speeding the cop wouldn't know which car it was because the gun only detects the speed of the fastest driver).
I returned my detector and used the cash from it along with a little extra to pay for my ticket which came out to be $210.
Now although the inner city cops have the handheld, the outer city patrol men stuck with the k band because it allowed them to hide behind trees or similar objects and shoot a long distance all the time.. and the cop could even take a nap and just wake up when his buzzer went off saying someone had passed by that was speeding.
Anyways it has been a good while since I last had that detector and I was considering buying another one (a better brand though) this august when I buy my new car (which will probably be a camero or a turbocharged honda civic).
I was just wanting to know if any of you had stories about radar detectors or could give me a few pointers on which brands are good and which aren't useful for anything other than to take your money.