I worked with Kustom Signals units. Like I said, it's been a while... The KR-10 and KR-11, as well as the Falcon and a couple of others. The KR-11 was a "maintenance intensive" unit, but the KR-10 was pretty solid; I'll bet there are a lot of them still on the road. I KNOW my V-1 has detected movers "sniffing" the patrol vehicle speed. How do your movers keep track of the patrol car speed? Do they have dual displays, one for the patrol car and one for the target vehicle?
Oh man, the KR-10. We're finally retiring our old KR-10's and Troopers- they've been going down one by one over the years. Never really had very good range and I hated using them moving, but they certainly took a beating.
Yes, moving units now have three windows: Target, Patrol, and Lock. Some of the very newest will have two target windows; one for strongest signal, one for next strongest. I'm waiting for the day that phased array radar can be mounted on something smaller than an Aegis cruiser- simultaneously tracking and ID'ing multiple targets. Heh.
OH CRAP, IT'S FRIDAY! *Sarge runs from the hail of beer bottles and rotten cabbage*
You wrote:
I never operated radar or laser to generate revenue. I operated it to slow people down on the roadways where we had significant problems with injury accidents. If the guy with the radar detector is paying attention to his surroundings, notices that there are cops ahead and slows down, then he's doing better than the hundreds of others who drive with their heads up their ass and cause most of the wrecks. I'll let him go. But the one who doesn't even notice me sitting right out in the middle of the median, visible for a mile in each direction- well, then, press hard, five copies.
Surely it's dangerous to make a generalization. Dangerous for me to say all LEOs are in the business of making rain for the county or municipality he works in - just as it's equally dangerous to assume all LEOs are trying to slow traffic down, as you say you did.
I never made the generalization that all LEOs are trying to slow traffic down. I said I did, and I train my students to. What they do when they get back to their agencies is another matter.
As a side note, in Georgia, if an agency makes more than 40% of its budget from speeding tickets, it's considered to be running a speed trap and its radar permit is revoked. That's thanks to the town of Ludowici, which even I would say ran a speed trap- it was so bad that then governor Lester Maddox put a billboard up on the outskirts of town warning people of the speed trap and guarded it with State Troopers.
Seems like this has come up before. I use the Escort X50 and usually if "your" lasered your dead. But where a quality unit like the Valentine or Escort come into play is if the gentleman, I'll just call him that for now, (just kidding), holding that laser/lidar unit is using it on other mis-unfortunate uh um, speeders, a quality unit as these will pick up this activity well before you get your turn. "That" is the advantage of a quality unit. Don't waste your money on anything other than the Valentine, Escort, or Beltronics IMO. PM. <><
Laser spreads to an oval about 3 feet wide at 1000 feet out. If the operator is trying to tag vehicles at ungodly distances- 2 to 3,000 feet out- then there might be enough spread that the infrared light could be detected by other cars. Otherwise, not too likely. Like radar, it's a question of operator technique. At those distances, though, it's doubtful the operator could hold the unit steady enough to get a reading; and if it's spread so much that it's reflecting off of multiple cars, the unit's error detection will throw out all those readings and not show any speed ("sum of least squares" error formula). Laser jammers, now- they attempt to confuse the laser unit by flooding it with infrared light of their own. The lidar unit will be able to get a reading eventually; but at a much reduced range. Different manufacturer's lidar units have differing susceptibilities to jamming; some have their range reduced considerably, others are barely affected. YMMV.
Now. In all of this, I'm not trying to condone or condemn radar/laser detector use. I really don't care- if you slow down because your detector went off, or you saw a cop, or other traffic slowed, or someone flashed their headlights, or patted their helmet, or said "Smokey's in the bushes!" on the CB, or held up a sign saying "speed trap ahead", then I've done my job. Hell, I wrote 1/3 warnings to 2/3 tickets when I was on a traffic unit, which earned me no end of heckling; but if I felt the person would modify their driving behavior with a warning then that's what I gave them. I even used a radar detector before I got into law enforcement- a real POS that I tossed; I did better just keeping my eyes open than that damn thing did. But every now and then I spot some misinformation or misconceptions about how radar or laser works and my eye starts twitching and I can't stop myself from posting- it's the instructor in me. It's too early in the day and I haven't had my beer quota.
