Radar speed guns - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: woodchips
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2020, 11:40:55 am
content: I have a Canadian MUNI-QUIP KG-P radar speed gun, and with the lifting of the lockdown people don't seem to be able to read the speed limits any more.It seems to work, but no instructions. Came with a tuning fork which must be for calibrating the difference frequency for a speed, but how do you use it?Can any one please give me some instructions, and because this will no doubt go to the police some backup documentation would be very nice. I can't find anything on the web.

author: Benta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2020, 05:42:42 pm
content: Quote from: woodchips on August 01, 2020, 11:40:55 am"Go to the police"? What for? Do you really expect that an unauthorised, uncalibrated speed camera set up by an amateur will hold up in court?

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2020, 06:12:19 pm
content: One of the nice things about lockdown was less speeding, even though the roads were clear. I suppose drivers were more careful because they didn't want to end up in a COVID infested hospital.I don't think he wants to gather evidence which can be used in court, just enough to alert the authorities there's a problem.

author: Benta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2020, 06:18:45 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on August 01, 2020, 06:12:19 pmIn that case, a stopwatch and a documented traveled distance is enough (and probably better than the speed camera, which no one believes anyway).

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2020, 08:19:04 pm
content: Quote from: Benta on August 01, 2020, 06:18:45 pmWhere's the fun in that?

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2020, 08:43:43 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on August 01, 2020, 06:12:19 pmAhem -opposite here in the USA, some were taking advantage of the empty roads and speed like demons.A team claimed to have set the NY to LA speed record:"A Team Exploited the Coronavirus Pandemic to Set a 26-Hour 38-Minute Cross-Country Record""... ... ... The 26 hour, 38 minute time—which beats the record set in November by more than 45 minutes—appears to be legitimate, according to Ed Bolian, a Cannonball insider and driver who set his own 28 hour, 50 minute record in 2013. ... ... ..."Quoted from Road and Track magazine, a popular car buff magazine:https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a32092440/26-hour-38-minute-cannonball-record-coronavirus/I observed that with personal experiences too (during the early lock down days), there were nut cases buzzing by at speeds I have not seen before. As the lock down went on, I did found a much higher state troopers and local police presence on highways. More than twice what I would see during "peak" normal times. "Peak" speed trap times are first spring/snow-free day and around long weekends including the pre- and post- weekend when people rush to get there and rush to come back.By now, lock down is not full lock down anymore (partial opening), traffic is more or less normal. Some of my favorites are no longer - notably, the local car repair shop which I have used for over 20 years. Car repair was qualified as "necessary" and they could have stayed open. I suppose because people are not going out so they did not get the business they needed to survive.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2020, 09:10:50 pm
content: I remember the first snowy day in Chicago after the lockdown started. The area expressways naturally had far less traffic, and drivers responded by speeding. Normally, with snow and ice, drivers would slow down, but this time they didn't and there was a >50-car pileup just north of downtown on I-90/94. seehttps://www.cnn.com/2020/04/15/us/chicago-kennedy-expressway-pileup-trnd/index.html

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2020, 10:10:30 pm
content: Quote from: Rick Law on August 01, 2020, 08:43:43 pmIt's odd how people respond differently. When lockdown started, I was furloughed from work. I stayed at home most of the time, except for a quick cycle ride everyday,as we were allowed to go out for exercise. I loved the fact that drivers seems to be more cautious, giving me more room.

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2020, 02:00:30 am
content: Quote from: Zero999 on August 01, 2020, 06:12:19 pmOpposite, actually. Rozzers were complaining that there was much more speeding due to the clear roads, and recorded some seriously way over the top nicks.BBCGuardianBBCQuoteDoubtful. Most people are happy to speed because they know they're not going to crash, so where they might end up is irrelevant.

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2020, 02:47:13 am
content: Quote from: dunkemhigh on August 02, 2020, 02:00:30 amNo, not the opposite. How aboutboth. I'd agree with Zero999's assertion that traffic in general was slowerandaccept that more tickets were issued.In my experience road speeds here locally in residential East London were in general lower*. That does not preclude that a relatively small number of peoplealsodeliberately speeded or were careless and got caught. That first link to the BBC shows the London police issuing 1360 more speeding tickets in April, out of a population of circa 8 million people. That's an extra 45 1/3 tickets a day, or 1.4 per borough per day. So it's quite possible to observe a borough as being 'slower than normal' if you didn't happen to see the 1 or 2 vehicles in that borough that day that were going fast enough to get ticketed.I certainly noticed that on sections of road where my speed would normally be naturally limited by traffic levels I would find my speed creeping up and I had to make an effort to actively observe the speed limit rather than passively let the traffic do it for me. Perhaps a significant number of the ticketed simply weren't as careful as me.*In fact, I experienced more people than normal driving very slowly; speed <= 20 mph on clear roads with 30-40 mph limits. My hypothesis for this is that people who are normally scared of driving in normal London traffic, scared of driving at all in fact, were out on the roads when normally they wouldn't be. Also, the pedestrians became even more suicidal than the normal smartphone-glued Darwin awards in waiting - a non-trivial number took to just walking along the middle of the road blithely ignoring even the mere possibility of there being vehicular traffic.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 02, 2020, 03:21:29 am
content: Quote from: woodchips on August 01, 2020, 11:40:55 amThe tuning forks aren't used for calibration. They are used to check the calibration. Tap the fork on a suitable surface and place it in front of the radar. The oscillation represents a known speed. The radar should read whatever "speed" the fork is, if it doesn't, it needs to be re-calibrated. Some makes/models come with two forks, one for a low speed reading and one for a higher speed.Police here in Australia have made available to the public the document highway patrol used for the Silver Eagle II radars. It includes a section on tuning forks.https://www.police.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/291516/Silver_Eagle_II_Operation_Manual_06_2013.pdfIt's old but most of the content is still very relevant. It's quite comprehensive and if you wanted to join Highway Patrol, this is part of what you needed to learn and know.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2020, 10:51:40 am
content: Quote from: Zero999 on August 01, 2020, 06:12:19 pmYou must not have lived anywhere near me I had someone pass me at >100mph on a NSL 60 and I was already travelling at 60 mph on that road.That happened several times on the few days I had to go into work and it was always a different car...

author: woodchips
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 03, 2020, 05:13:37 pm
content: Thank you to Halcyon for the article. Thanks also to all the other replies.Did try putting the fork in front when I got the gun, didn't seem to get any response. I would have assumed there was a place within the actual doppler circuit that turned the frequency into a speed. In fact, looking at it again it is marked 65mph K-band. But looks like a machined lump of aluminium, not the tuning fork as on setting a teleprinter motor.Will have to experiment, also on traffic. It is fairly easy to get a reasonable idea of traffic speed just by looking. Count the number of kerb stones over a distance and count seconds. You know if it is 30mph, slow, or 50mph, quite a bit faster.The idea of every gun having a tuning fork is to allow instant calibration check, and it should be ok in court if the argument is between 30mph and 70mph. The video with the distance traveled in each frame is also a backup.

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 03, 2020, 05:57:29 pm
content: QuoteRecord at 20fps, playback at 25fps. Use a short-focus lens to accentuate the feeling of speed. Bosh.Something nags my mind that you need two sources of reliabel evidence. With a normal speed trap, the (calibrated, checked that shift) camera is one and the opinion of the trained policeman is the other, and he can't just zap everything passing then agree that the one going to fast looked it at the time - he has to actually consider it to be speeding and then verify that with the camera. Some civilian with a bone to pick and dodgy equipment might, if they're lucky, get the police to 'have words' with a bad driver. Nick? Shouldn't think so.

author: LaserSteve
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 03, 2020, 06:08:39 pm
content: Here, North East Ohio, was a Mad Max free for all. With only designated essentials on the road, zoom zoom at furious speeds. Including the cops and troopers, who would stay parked along the roads, evidently self isolating. I was staying slow, but having to dodge semi trucks. The semi's upped their game, "owning" the highway.Now after a period of intense enforcement we appear back to normal.I had no intention of ending up in custody or ER.Being one of the few designated employees on a huge campus was bad enough.Steve.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 03, 2020, 07:10:01 pm
content: Can't say I saw any less or any more speeding, mainly because the local police have not, due to some minor court cases that declared all fines issued for the last few years invalid, due to lack of training, are invalid, so there has been no speed traps for the last 3 years or so. Markedly less traffic, and as schools are still mostly closed a lot fewer soccer moms in the SUV, sort of stopping in the middle of the road so that the special "Dahlin/Engel/whatever" does not have the indignity and inconvenience of having to walk the extra few steps to school.Still got the twats who want to reach 120 speed bump to speed bump, driving the "compensator" car, because they are suffering a combination of balding, going grey, needing little blue pills, no longer having the 6 pack, and all that other stuff that comes naturally from excess. Only good thing is that with the curfew they at least are fewer from 10PM to 4AM, but are still out doing it. Hope they do what the one did, and mistake the brake distance, and wipe his sump out. 200m of oil trail before he seized, and pretty sure insurer would not pay out, because they will not cover mechanical damage from lowering your ride, as the most common way is not by using the right parts, but by chopping 3 turns off the springs.