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Date:         Fri, 2 Oct 1992 21:28:15 -0500
From:         Anne Burton Harwell <harwell@TENET.EDU>
Subject:      Radar detector update
Comments: To: Words-L Distribution <words-l@uga.cc.uga.edu>

You may recall last week my posting that I had purchased a brand-new Cobra
Trapshooter III radar detector, which I took to Austin and back to test it
out. Well, folks, it was an unadulterated piece of crap, if you'll 'scuse
my French. The ONLY thing it ever alerted me to was every trucker who was
running an overpowered CB radio.

There are now three radar bands we must defend ourselves against. The FCC
keeps granting bigger and bigger chunks of high-spectrum bandwidth to
police, and this new Ka band is a whopper. It's about 3 times wider than
the K and X bands, and instead of picking a single frequency within the
spectrum and sticking to it, these new radar guns can randomly select a
different frequency each time they fire.

The X ban has been completely co-opted by automatic door-opener radars;
they share the exact same frequency, so only poor or incredibly stubborn
departments shoot X. Plus, the older design of X band hardware means the
trooper has to run the gun fulltime - no instant-on. In Falfurrias, 65
miles north of here, there's a cop who even runs the durn gun when he's
parked at a gas pump! Aircraft could navigate by that radar beacon.

The K band brought with it solid state electronics and instant-on firing,
but it is located higher in the spectrum, and that spells - you guessed it
- more atmospheric attenuation - which means that even if the cop is
instant-on, if you have fast enough chips, you can usually read him before
he can lock you. (Incidentally, a motorcycle has even better odds because
there's so much less vehicle to bounce back radar energy.) The advent of
gallium arsenide componentry made detectors fast enough to detect the new
detectors.

Then, always lagging behind the irresistible tug of technology, the FCC
granted yet another spectrum spread to the law, with the hopes that they
could do exactly what they are now doing - shooting all different
wavelengths. "No detector can detect more than one frequency." Oh please.
As if someone wouldn't come out with a scanning detector.

Which is what Uniden has done, along with a spate of brands like BEL,
Whistler, Passport, and even Cobra. They call the scanning detectors
"Wideband" models, a name which just *sings* to this humble scrivener.

The Cobra (Trapshooter III) unit I took back to Sam's only detected ONE Ka
frequency, the one only used by stationary photo radars. Why did I buy
that unit? Because I had had marvelous experience with my previous Cobra
Trapshooter. But that unit was actually made by Uniden. The Trapshooter
III was evidently not. Its case was cheesy plastic, the visor clip was
flimsy and didn't hold the unit at a straight angle, and it didn't alert
me to anything but CB activity.

The Uniden I bought to replace it, the RD 5000W, is beautiful, well
designed, and appears to work much better. I'll conduct a more thorough
road test this weekend and find out for sure. It has a wrinkle-coat metal
case, excellent controls, and a warning buzzer that sounds like a warning,
unlike the Cobra, which had a dipsy-doodle buzzer that was too annoying
for words. Many other nice features are part of the package, but you get
the point. Never try to go cheap with your toys.

-abh
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