Those with radar detectors...

Was wondering which unit is working good for ya people. I plan to get one soon since I'm under the constant fear of being harass by stanking pigs in my area. I heard good reviews about the BEL 980 and they go for around ebay for like 200. How well does those work.. and do they always work?

Thanks ya.

I don't mean to sound like a cheap bastard but my girlfriend bought mine from CarToys for like $89. It's a Cobra and I know it's not one of the better radar detectors but I haven't got pulled over since I've hooked it up (knock on wood). It picks up laser and the "K" bands which is the only thing cops around here really use anyways, plus it does a whole butt-load of things that I don't even know about b/c I haven't read the manual yet :D I'm not really sure which model number it is but after using this one I wouldn't spend $200 on something I know I can get just as much use out of for under $100... just my opinion, though.

OK... model number is ESD9000 by Cobra.

Let's see, I always wanted one. Then my friend who had one told me to go 90 on the interstate with it in her car, she said it always works. I gain confidence, then slowly set the cruise to 103. Next thing I know, FHP's blue lights are flashing behind me.

I don't trust them.:mad:

You didn't get pulled for your detector not working properly. The thing most people don't know is that STATE TROOPERS are using new detectors called, "VASCAR" on the interstates. It's not radar and there is no way of detecting it because it is a computorized system that is motoring the time it takes you to get between two points and compares it with the time it would take if you were going the speed limit. So your detectors are useless against it!
-BUSTAMON-:grey:

I have a Cobra something or other. Can't remember the model #. It has K, Ka, X, W, and I think Y bands. It has a little clear thingy on the top for laser. It's good. Knock on wood.

so.. a vote...

Yes.. go ahead and buy the radar detector to spot cops ahead of time.. or...
No.. since they dont work... as one claimed...

What would you do?

Originally posted by CXHatchback
Let's see, I always wanted one. Then my friend who had one told me to go 90 on the interstate with it in her car, she said it always works. I gain confidence, then slowly set the cruise to 103. Next thing I know, FHP's blue lights are flashing behind me.

I don't trust them.:mad: Its a radar DETECTOR... not a radar PROTECTOR! A detector only tells you when cops are gunning you... and guess what? If it goes off? You got like 1-4 seconds depending on your speed to slow down before the cop gets a lock on your speed. They are a waste of money... just do the speed limit :finger:

Originally posted by sparq
... just do the speed limit :finger:

yea.. please don't go over WAY over the limit because you are then risking other people's lives.:)

If you are traveling 100 MPH, you are going at a rate of 146.66 FEET per SECOND. Most all state laws say the officer must use their gun within 700 feet for an accurate measurment. If your radar detector goes off from 1/4 mile away (1320 Feet) you have 620 feet or less than 4 seconds to react and slow down 35 miles per hour without making it too obvious. If you slam on your brakes, the cop is gonna be suspicious right then.

That is the best scenario... If the cop is in the other lane, you have a lot less reaction time or if he hides and only hits you with his radar, you had no idea. Or VASCAR which can't be detected. And still theres the planes up in the air that will get you.

And what did we all learn here? No radar detector will allow you to go 100 without being caught sooner or later.

Originally posted by grrltoy
I have a Cobra something or other. Can't remember the model #. It has K, Ka, X, W, and I think Y bands. It has a little clear thingy on the top for laser. It's good. Knock on wood.

Yep, sounds like the one I've got. And I guess it depends on where you drive. Here in Houston it's pretty easy to dodge the cops anyways just b/c there's so many other people driving along with you. But I like to have a "heads up" and know when they're there. So it's up to you whether to get one or not... 100 bucks is 100 bucks. I can think of plenty other things I could spens that $$ on.

also just because they don't clock you they can claim you were "recklessly driving"

Guys. No.No.No.No...By the time your detector goes off the cop already has your speed :flipa:

The detector goes off when the beam hits your car, the beam travels faster than the speed of light so by the time you react (which is usually 1 - 2 seconds) your already caught. Invest the real money and get a radar jamar. There is a company in flordia that makes one that is so ssswweettt. It mounts under your front bumber and when the beam hits your car a buzzing noise goes off in your car, then you slow down to the speed limit and turn the jamar off so when he hits u again his gun reads the speed limit :) its the best thing out right now. Dont waist money on a detector cause the only thing a detector is gonna do is tell you the same thing the cop is gonna tell you; "you were speeding and your ass is CAUGHT"

Originally posted by dslkicksass
The detector goes off when the beam hits your car, the beam travels faster than the speed of light

looks like someone has been watching too much sci-fi channel :alien:

NOTHING we know of travels faster than the speed of light - even shows like star trek and B5 have to do a little trickery to achieve it.

Originally posted by dslkicksass
Guys. No.No.No.No...By the time your detector goes off the cop already has your speed :flipa:

That's not really true though... I've picked up cops on my radar that are over an overpass or something like that. There's no way they can have already pinged me out of line of sight. I usually pick up a radar signal at least 3 or 4 seconds BEFORE I can even see the cop.

by the time you react (which is usually 1 - 2 seconds) your already caught. Invest the real money and get a radar jamar.

The idea behind the detector is that you will be alerted of people ahead of you being clocked, so you can slow down. The detector will be useless if you are the only person on the road (since it will go off only to clock YOU).

Jammers have been DISPROVEN. Enough said!




you have 620 feet or less than 4 seconds to react and slow down 35 miles per hour without making it too obvious. If you slam on your brakes, the cop is gonna be suspicious right then.

That is the best scenario... If the cop is in the other lane, you have a lot less reaction time or if he hides and only hits you with his radar, you had no idea. Or VASCAR which can't be detected. And still theres the planes up in the air that will get you.


Yes, the idea is to get warned early & slam on the brakes. You will be clocked for speeding even if you don't make it obvious you slowed down, but by hitting the brakes you can go from a 130MPH ticket to a 84MPH ticket.

Never heard of VASCAR?!?!? What is this?




please don't go over WAY over the limit because you are then risking other people's lives.

This better be some kinda joke thatz gone way over my head, because that is GH3Y!

Originally posted by sparq
Its a radar DETECTOR... not a radar PROTECTOR! A detector only tells you when cops are gunning you... and guess what? If it goes off? You got like 1-4 seconds depending on your speed to slow down before the cop gets a lock on your speed.

That's just it. It never went off.

Originally posted by CXHatchback
That's just it. It never went off.

He was probably cruising along & you passed him, or he visually noticed that you were passing everything in site?


By the way, that pic iz HOT my friend!!!!!!
http://helios.acomp.usf.edu/~reade/angelo/angsig2.jpg

lol, thanks.

I think they were either hiding in the median or going the other way. It was a FHP in training too, she was with a guy helping her do everyting by the book. Along with the ticket I got a warning for not having the proper address on my license and my friend got a warning for not having her registration on her.

Originally posted by CXHatchback
Along with the ticket I got a warning for not having the proper address on my license and my friend got a warning for not having her registration on her.

Well, I know its no consolation but at least you got warnings and not tickets for those other two things.

I learned that you ALWAYS tell the cops that your address is current... even if you live in a completely different state... because here in Cali it is a big offense to have an out-dated ID.

yeah, next time I'm gonna tell them that I live there (in PC), but I go to school in orlando. Not worth another ticket and or warning.

Wierd, the last 4 times I've been pulled over it was by state troopers. No wonder I haven't seen many warnings in a while.

Originally posted by 91Teg/99EX
I heard good reviews about the BEL 980 and they go for around ebay for like 200.

I will find out just how well they work... I just bought one on eBay from "Phil". We'll see if

1. I actually get it
2. It works & isn't busted
3. Is worth the $200...

Originally posted by MadPrawpz


Never heard of VASCAR?!?!? What is this?

Go to that www.radartest.com They explain everything there. And I agree with what you said in response to my earlier message. But I was proving the point that you aren't invisible with a radar detector.

you need a radar/laser jammer not a dectotor, altho my Cobra somthign has helped a bunch of times.

it cover K,Ka,X,Laser and VG2 Protection.

NOTHING we know of travels faster than the speed of light

Yeah nothing accept for x-rays, radar, microwaves, radio waves, all the other ungodly fast waves out there, yeah none of those travel faster that light ;)

Originally posted by Devedander


Yeah nothing accept for x-rays, radar, microwaves, radio waves, all the other ungodly fast waves out there, yeah none of those travel faster that light ;)

well ........ they don't - all those things you mentioned are all electromagnetic waves. They ALL travel at 186,000 miles/sec (300,000 km/sec). the ONLY difference between x-rays, radar, microwaves, radio freq waves, light waves, infrared, ultraviolet, etc .... is that their frequency and wavelengths differ. Velocity = frequency X wavelength ..... this is true for any wave. For electromagnetic waves, the velocity is fixed. If you are unsure of this, I think you need to crack open the science book ........... (BEFORE you make yourself look ignorant)

Originally posted by MadPrawpz


This better be some kinda joke thatz gone way over my head, because that is GH3Y!

the only thing gay here is you. and you think going way pass over the speed limit is ok? you're the reason why fuckers get into accidents and kill innocent people. :rolleyes: people like you don't care about anything else except going 100mph in a 50mph zone. please get a damn life if you don't already have one:rolleyes:

Originally posted by GSteg
the only thing gay here is you. and you think going way pass over the speed limit is ok? you're the reason why fuckers get into accidents and kill innocent people. :rolleyes: people like you don't care about anything else except going 100mph in a 50mph zone. please get a damn life if you don't already have one:rolleyes:

HAHAHAHHA!!!

Undercover cop or some 13 years old... Which one is you, foo?!

Speed does not make you get into an accident. If it did, then 100% of airplanes would crash because they are going very fast.

I bet you think that guns kill people too, right? Go back to your room son.:flipa:

Originally posted by DMC12


HAHAHAHHA!!!

Undercover cop or some 13 years old... Which one is you, foo?!

Speed does not make you get into an accident. If it did, then 100% of airplanes would crash because they are going very fast.

I bet you think that guns kill people too, right? Go back to your room son.:flipa:

i never said speed creates accident..going over the limit by a lot does. try avoiding accidents by going 100mph in a 40mph zone with other cars around..:rolleyes:

Originally posted by GSteg


i never said speed creates accident..going over the limit by a lot does. try avoiding accidents by going 100mph in a 40mph zone with other cars around..:rolleyes:

Or try going 110 and have a semi pull out into that lane 500 feet in front of you doing 60.... its not cool. It happened to me earlier this year when I was stupid :bloated: It scared the fawk out of me then i had to jack the brakes to get it slowed down. You might have control of your car, but there are a lot of idiots who can't drive.

And deserted roads at night are worse. You never know if a deer is gonna run out in front of you or if the road takes a sudden turn or if theres a pile of nails in the middle of the road. As my drivers ed teacher said "Don't out run your headlights" (I know you can't travel faster than the speed of light. Just think about it)

This is so hilarious, this is going into the books hahahahahahaha.

:hehehe:

But my Honda Accord has 2.2 Liters :right:

BTW, what is this doing in here anyways? :confused:

Do you mind if I post that pic in the OT forum?

DO the detectors work in canada too???

Originally posted by PaulD's_revenge


well ........ they don't - all those things you mentioned are all electromagnetic waves. They ALL travel at 186,000 miles/sec (300,000 km/sec). the ONLY difference between x-rays, radar, microwaves, radio freq waves, light waves, infrared, ultraviolet, etc .... is that their frequency and wavelengths differ. Velocity = frequency X wavelength ..... this is true for any wave. For electromagnetic waves, the velocity is fixed. If you are unsure of this, I think you need to crack open the science book ........... (BEFORE you make yourself look ignorant)

Maybe not all those waves travel faster than light, but during some experimetns this was found to happen:

In one experiment, led by Anedio Ranfagni, of the Italian National Research Council, microwaves were sent through a narrow, ring-shaped opening onto a large mirror, sent the waves back to and behind the source. The arrival times of these pulses showed that they travelled at speeds 5% above c.

and

In the other experiment, a pulse of light that enters a transparent chamber filled with caesium gas reaches speeds 300 times the normal speed of light.

According to the researchers, the main part of the light pulse leaves the far side of the chamber even before it enters at the near side!


Maybe you should crack open more than the first book that comes to mind in your research :rolleyes:

I would like to see where you got these from - cuz it breaks all the known laws of physics .........

Originally posted by PaulD's_revenge
I would like to see where you got these from - cuz it breaks all the known laws of physics ......... The world is changing my friend... what you thought you once knew - you do not.

Originally posted by sparq
... what you thought you once knew - you do not.

huh?:confused:

Actually according to Einstien and the formula and theory of E=MC2, Energy was equal to the mass times the speed of light squared; that my friend is what has not been proven.. Not once did he state that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light which is 186,000 miles per second.. The speed of light is simply a measurement and a standard to which we base our science and measurements from..

there are other ramifications ......... if an object achieves light speed - time slows to zero (it stops passing), it's mass also becomes infinite. I am still trying to find some more info on this, I will post my findings ...

Originally posted by GSteg
i never said speed creates accident..going over the limit by a lot does. try avoiding accidents by going 100mph in a 40mph zone with other cars around..

If the freeway is empty, the time is 2 A.M. and you are in the fast lane with a vehicle that is engineered to handle 150 MPH... and you are going 115 MPH, then your speed will not create an accident.

Other factors cause accidents, such as stupidity (which would be the cause for going 100MPH on a crowded street). The only place I recommend doing that is in the movies (such as F&F). All these police crack-downs in deserted parts of town at 2 A.M. are just motivated by ignorance. I mean, in the 70's you could pretty much do whatever you wanted if you were in the boonies. Today, it seems like the country has turned "Big-Brother" and wants to control everything we do...

It just pisses me off that some fat, ugly cop with a HIGH SCHOOL degree (who can't talk into his CB & drive at the same time) has complete control over my career, my love life, and my mental health. The cop THINKS you are being wreckless, so he tickets you heavily. You lose your license, and your insurance goes up. Your girl thinks you're a loser because you're always asking her for rides now, so she dumps you. Your employer thinks you're a bad person & fires you. It all starts taking a giant "domino effect" shit on your life. The whole thing is just so stupid! I wish the police would go after real criminals, like the guy who cut up Chandra Levy... but NOOOOO! They are way too busy chasing after us to make sure our headlights are DOT approved! And that neon under your car is illegal!!! While they sit there & write you up for some stupid shit, there is a guy in an office building somewhere scamming money (Enron, Arthur Anderson, etc...), a politician knifing up a girl (Condit), a neighbor raping and cutting up a little baby, and a President that is smoking weed and getting blow jobs. Fuck the U.S. I hope we all die in a giant Terrorist atttack because "Freedom" is now a big joke!!! We are being controlled by stupid, fat high-school-diploma idiots that think they know everything!!!!
:flipa:

Originally posted by DMC12


It just pisses me off that some fat, ugly cop with a HIGH SCHOOL degree (who can't talk into his CB & drive at the same time) has complete control over my career, my love life, and my mental health. The cop THINKS you are being wreckless, so he tickets you heavily. You lose your license, and your insurance goes up. Your girl thinks you're a loser because you're always asking her for rides now, so she dumps you. Your employer thinks you're a bad person & fires you. It all starts taking a giant "domino effect" shit on your life. The whole thing is just so stupid! I wish the police would go after real criminals, like the guy who cut up Chandra Levy... but NOOOOO! They are way too busy chasing after us to make sure our headlights are DOT approved! And that neon under your car is illegal!!! While they sit there & write you up for some stupid shit, there is a guy in an office building somewhere scamming money (Enron, Arthur Anderson, etc...), a politician knifing up a girl (Condit), a neighbor raping and cutting up a little baby, and a President that is smoking weed and getting blow jobs. Fuck the U.S. I hope we all die in a giant Terrorist atttack because "Freedom" is now a big joke!!! We are being controlled by stupid, fat high-school-diploma idiots that think they know everything!!!!
:flipa:

werd...i hate those police. they give my friend fix-it tickets for his exaust even though they are CARB legal and the noise polution board approved them. screw bush...he's the devil..i should be the president:D anyways...cops should be going on other cases such as drugs and rape and etc..but nooo...they just wanna get us because supposedly our cars look better and gets better mileage:finger: j/k

lol DMC12. That's what I'm saying. No other cars around and it's 2am. Why bother with little shit like that? I suppose I was going a little bit over, but damn, I see them pulling people over going like 7 over the limit.

well, after reading numerous articles and talking to a few of the physics professors at the local university - it seems that the only thing they have agreed on is to agree to disagree. From what I have gathered, I don't think we will get a definitive answer in our life time - all of the "facts" were based on theroies that, as of now, cannot be proved.

The only thing I can see, is that the speed of any electromagnetic wave would be determined by it's surroundings or circumstances ...... so in any given situation - the radar beam that the cop fires at your car would travel at the same speed as light or any other EM wave covering that same place at exactly the same time. I find it intersting, but it is not really a subject for a car stereo forum

Your right its not a subject for here, but I just can't resist. The other theoretical problem with mass traveling at light speed is that it would increase massively in size (infitely? I forget) to the point it would displace other matter and change the total mass of the universe.

I just did a quick search for faster than light travel on google.com, I have seen many other articles describing faster than light travel experiments. And if you really wanna get down to it there is the electron spin matching, in which an electrons neucleus is split and both it's halves are spin paired no matter how far apart, something connecting them must be travelling faster than light ot achieve this.

In one experiment, led by Anedio Ranfagni, of the Italian National Research Council, microwaves were sent through a narrow, ring-shaped opening onto a large mirror, sent the waves back to and behind the source. The arrival times of these pulses showed that they travelled at speeds 5% above c.

I've heard of these experiments as well. But this is still just light (which has no mass) travelling faster than the "speed of light" itself.

Anyways, as far as radar detectors go, I've had mine since I bought my car in '95. Its a Motorola (don't remember the model number) and it detects X & K bands. It's saved me from SEVERAL tickets. It usually goes off a few seconds before I'm actually in range. Sometimes, it goes off 1/4 to 1/2 a mile in advance.

The cool thing about mine is its simplicity. It doesn't have a ton of different settings and 30 different beeps, and it's also extremely small. That way it doesn't distract me while I'm driving, but I know that when it starts to beep, I had better slow down.

I've been busted by that VASCAR shit, never saw it coming, gonna have to read up on it.

Originally posted by dslkicksass
Guys. No.No.No.No...By the time your detector goes off the cop already has your speed :flipa:

The detector goes off when the beam hits your car, the beam travels faster than the speed of light so by the time you react (which is usually 1 - 2 seconds) your already caught. Invest the real money and get a radar jamar. There is a company in flordia that makes one that is so ssswweettt. It mounts under your front bumber and when the beam hits your car a buzzing noise goes off in your car, then you slow down to the speed limit and turn the jamar off so when he hits u again his gun reads the speed limit :) its the best thing out right now. Dont waist money on a detector cause the only thing a detector is gonna do is tell you the same thing the cop is gonna tell you; "you were speeding and your ass is CAUGHT"

actually he doesnt, as long as there is traffic ahead of you, your detector should pick up him clocking other cars