Honda Insight Window Tint

[Hornhonker]

As a ham I'm always interested in "RF" stuff and made some interesting Insight tint related tests. I recently bought a Kustom HR-12 radar gun off ebay and thought I'd try it out in the insight. I found that using the radar gun in the forward moving mode seemed only lock on to a target at about 400-500 feet which seemed pretty subpar. So I parked the car and tried a shot out the closed passenger window with similar results. Now I lowered the window and what would you know, range increased to about 2000 feet. The front and side window tint was killing the outgoing and reflected radar signal.

Now what has this to do with normal drivers who don't run radar you ask ? This same tint will have a similar effect on your radar detector. I use a radar detector when going to work and noticed it didn't seem as sensitive as it was in my 04 Smart which had very little tint. I would guess the Honda Insight window tint is probably aluminum based and is a bad thing for the detector and possibly hand held radios with interior antennas. So for those who use a radar detector I think the only option would be to go to something like the remote mount BEL STI-R or Escort 9500-ci . Very pricey but short of replacing all the window glass with clear it is the only way to get things working properly.

[HwyBear]

Nothing to do with tint. It is the angle of the window, some of the radar beam is refracted on the way out and same on the return.

[Stealth Stalker]

Originally Posted by HwyBear

Nothing to do with tint. It is the angle of the window, some of the radar beam is refracted on the way out and same on the return.

Actually, it is a well known and established phenomenon that some window tints attenuate RF. They are metallic in nature. Most any professional tint shop these days will be able to tell you whether or not their tints are metallic or not, and the high end tints like Llumar are specifically marketed as being non-metallic. This all got started as people noticed that their cellphone performance was worse after tinting their car windows, but it took years for the tint manufacturers to finally respond.

On the other hand, I would be very surprised if simple window tinting was cutting the performance of a K band gun by seventy five percent, so I agree that there may be more at work here than just window tint. Have you had the gun checked out since you bought it? Remember, if it was on eBay, there's a reason for it.

[Azonehits]

One thing you need to do is have your HR12 calibrated. Your HR12 should clock speeds more than 2K ft. Metallic tint can also decrease performance of radar gun and radar detector. Do you have a mirror like tint? Mirror like tint are usually metallic tint.