Day #2 was pretty uneventful..well sorta- Where do the officers go when you want to test a new radar detector?!?!?!
I'm running Highway mode, all bands ON, POP disabled, SWS disabled, with default Filter. I had both my Pro 78 and 8500 mounted at the same level on the windshield and side by side. Never ran them both at the same time so they wouldn't interfere with one another.
I did a lot of driving around today (work related) and had a mixture of city and interstate driving. On some backroads I did get some random blips of K-band which would have a strength of '2' for a second or two and then it would just vanish. I had the same thing happen with Ka once with no other vehicles around...so no crapras to blame! No real police radar encounters.
I did pass a small town police station with a police vehicle parked perpendicular to the road approximately 25'-30' from my lane of travel with his K-band radar still running. They do this all the time...the Pro 78 alerted at roughly the same point my 8500 does (approx. 300ft.), yet it only reached a signal strength of 3 when I passed directly in front of and within 25 feet of the radar at approximately 25mph. I circled around and turned off the Pro 78 and turned the 8500 on, alert point was the same yet the 8500 went full scale in front of the unit!!! With both passes there was nothing between me and the radar unit. Hmmm...not sure what to make of that-
Yesterday in my other post I mentioned a "drone" that emits a weak X-band signal. Today I talked to a contact I have and he told me that the "drone" I am seeing is actually a CCTV camera that allows the DOT to view traffic conditions from their traffic center in Raleigh. This Camera is up on the overpass mounted on a 30' pole so it has a good vantage point and view of the interstate. This camera runs off of direct power (not solar) and is tied into the controller cabinet at the interchange on the road above the interstate. So with that, I tested the Pro 78 and the 8500 to see if there was and significant differences. There was light traffic, I used the same lane and drove the same speed for each run. First run with the Pro 78, I got an alert at about .1 miles and the second run was just a tad less. So I crank up the 8500, powered off the 78, and made two runs. First run with the 8500 alerted at .25 miles, and the second run was at .3 miles. Signal strength was approximately the same on both units.
So far I have no opinion good or bad on the Pro 78 until I get real radar encounters. The X-band does seem to be reduced in this unit, buit seeing that X-band alerts are usually ridiculously long (assuming constant on) it really doesn't bother me. Instant on, well your toast anyway unless the rabbitt is being used!
The k-band encounter with the parked cruiser I described above does concern me a little. It did alert, but did not go full scale when it probably should have.
It has only been 2 days...so I'm probably being a bit impatient. Hell sometimes I can go for weeks without hearing anything, so this will take time to truely test real threats. I can't wait!
Till next time!
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