Will the V1 pick these things up?

[FMR6092USMC]

Ok, so I live in the 4th worst speed trap city in the United States. So, the city council of CO Springs, CO, in all their infinite wisdom have decided to start using a mobile speed van around the city. Here's the real sh*tty part though. The tolerance on these things is ONLY going to be a whopping FOUR MPH. Yes, you read that right, according to the local news here, citations will start being issued for doing only 5 over the PSL. With that said, I only have an Escort 8500 X50 M4 detector right now. I was wondering if I would fare better against these new speed vans with a V1????? Any of you guys have any experience with these things? THX

[Bridge Cables]

Are the speed vans radar or laser based? I don’t have experience with the radar based vans, although there are threads about those I believe primarily in the southwest.

If they are the laser based ones like we had here, until they outlawed them, pretty much enjoy the PSL even with the V1. We ran a lot of tests with several V1 models and several vehicles at the same time. No defense, not even with good jammers, you’ll JTG every time making your tag, er, every interesting. They were all rear shots, computer controlled system, and the beam window was usually one to two seconds at 15 to 200 feet, not long enough to JTK.

BC

[kpatz]

Set up the jammer so it picks up/jams the signal, and wire the jammer's mute output to a motor that flips your plate up for a few seconds, when the camera takes the photo. Problem solved.

But all kidding aside, would such a system shoot a photo if it can't get a speed reading? With that short a range and short a shooting window, plus the fact that the gun is fixed position (no LEO to aim at reflective points), there are probably some cars it fails to get a reading on even without jammers.

That said, I think radar based scameras are more common in the USA than laser-based ones. A V1 should be able to pick it up, but the detection range is likely to be short, due to it being low power and forward facing.

[Digital Dude]

Currently, the best RD to afford you a bit more time to react to a low powered K-band encounter, is the Redline. Here in Arizona, we had dozens of these scattered along the freeway until the contract was terminated. Hopefully, Escort has resolved the QC issues with this otherwise fine unit.

If it’s the type as described by ‘Bridge Cables’ it sounds like its pretty much game over. Still, I wonder if LI-HP’s were used in that test.

[Bridge Cables]

Set up the jammer so it picks up/jams the signal, and wire the jammer's mute output to a motor that flips your plate up for a few seconds, when the camera takes the photo. Problem solved.

But all kidding aside, would such a system shoot a photo if it can't get a speed reading? With that short a range and short a shooting window, plus the fact that the gun is fixed position (no LEO to aim at reflective points), there are probably some cars it fails to get a reading on even without jammers.

That said, I think radar based scameras are more common in the USA than laser-based ones. A V1 should be able to pick it up, but the detection range is likely to be short, due to it being low power and forward facing.

Kpatz, it was a Peak laser speed van system. Always shooting in the rear after you passed the van… if you spotted it. NC only has rear tags. Peak got a reading just about every time per the TV news casts and made millions of dollars in fines! In fact the CMPD has to pay back the school system the fine monies, they normally go to school system, which is about 5 million and change. I have not heard of them being used anywhere else… so far.

They controlled the aiming and function of the laser, a Kustom III, via a top end desktop computer in the van. The operator normally after parking, set up the van’s four corner stability rods, tweaked the computer for that location, the computer aimed the laser and tag camera, then read the newspaper and ate donuts, you could see him in the side windows reading!

The system would take a picture of one vehicle every half second. Peak was ready to bring out the multi-lane tracking laser van systems when the whole operation got tossed out by the NC courts. The normal set up was about 15 to 200 feet distance with a duration of 1 to 2 seconds in the beam noted by both a 1.7 and 1.8 V1 mounted low, high, in the middle, on the right and left sides of the front windshield and back glass trying both the front and rear V1 laser receptors. We burned up a lot of gas on those tests! Always got an alert in the beam, 1 to 2 seconds, I believe that was due to the height of laser in the van aiming down at your tag as we crossed through the beam. We never got a reflection from vehicles ahead. We even used our own big van with a highly reflective back end to our trailing car, nothing, until you were directly in the beam, it wasn’t pretty.

On rare occasions they would shoot up to a half mile by the airport, on the Billy Graham Expressway. Evidently they knew where the edge of the beam was so to just nick the vehicle with the laser and then the camera was separately aimed at the whole back end of the vehicle to obtain the tag info. At least that is how our V1’s alerted. If you drove down the middle of the 2 lanes on the lane paint markings, same direction – it’s a 4 lane highway, the V1’s would not respond. Whoever did the training was very, very good at what they did. The camera was infrared and could easily take you rear tag picture at a half mile in total darkness, had a TV report on that feature, geez! They had three vans in our town for the duration.

At least with the radar vans there is a chance of early alert.


BC