Ah the Irony

*****Now, before this turns into a bash the Crapra thread, I know it's a crap detector. That's why I have my v955 and 8500. This is an excercise in intellectual curiosity. *******


So, as some of you may have read in the Cobra forum (I don't blame you if you didn't), I just received a new XRS-9940 as a replacement for a 9930 I sent into Cobra b/c it had begun throwing falses.

Well, hooked up the new detector this morning just to see if Cobra had done anything new. :p I'm pretty sure my v955 gave me a dirty look when I took it down. Anyway, it's doing the same thing that the 9930 that I sent in was doing. In the irony of all ironies, it alerted to Ka about 6-7 times in an eight mile trip down an urban interstate corridor. Now, I've driven this particular stretch with a non x50 8500 and my v955 as recently as yesterday. No Ka. And in the 9930 I had in the wife's car until I sent it in did not start doing this until about a month ago.

So, my question is this: What could the Cobra be alerting to (besides other Cobras?) that is tripping up Ka so much? Why would it have JUST started recently? Why aren't the Belscorts alerting to it? I mean, obviously b/c they are better, but....I've never heard of so many Ka falses from anything other than Cobras themselves!:p

i think they must have timers to alert to Ka ever so often so the owners will think they work

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Originally Posted by hockey005

i think they must have timers to alert to Ka ever so often so the owners will think they work

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Yeah, just send it back so they can fix the timer. Once it alerts just a few times a day you will be all set.


But in all honesty, maybe it could be alerting to itself. If cobras leak Ka then maybe that is getting reflected back at itself somehow. Not sure if this will work but you could try putting the other RD up at the same time and seeing if the Ka goes off both at the same time, confirming that the Ka is indeed coming from the Cobra.

Nah, I don't think it's coming from the Cobra, really. It actually seems to be a signal as I remember now that the signals the 9930 was getting were in the same places. But what could be causing so many Ka alerts and only on the Cobras? Could it be misidentifying another frequency as Ka? The DOT did recently install some new solar powered equipment on some of the interstate signs. But I have no idea what it was. We've had those post mounted traffic monitoring radars for a while, but they've never caused falses.

a rd falsing on its self..wow lol

does that unit come with pop mode, if so can you turn it off. would kind of suck if it had pop but you couldnt turn it off

I would say to turn POP off also. It seems to do the trick with most other RD's.

-SuperSalad

My theory is this, the Bels have very good filtering. I am thinking that the Cobra is picking up a junk signal that the Bel is filtering out. Probably nothing wrong with the Cobra just poor filtering.

i had a RX55. everyday i drive past a store with a K band door opener, if my RX55 was in Highway it would alert to Ka every time but in Automode it would alert to K band.

couldnt figure out why

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Originally Posted by Ck15

does that unit come with pop mode, if so can you turn it off. would kind of suck if it had pop but you couldnt turn it off

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Nah, I always have POP off on my detectors.

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Originally Posted by focalcivic

My theory is this, the Bels have very good filtering. I am thinking that the Cobra is picking up a junk signal that the Bel is filtering out. Probably nothing wrong with the Cobra just poor filtering.

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That's what I was thinking. But I didn't think that the vectors really had any filtering... Maybe it's something on the edge of the Ka band???

The fact that it's only happening on or within a block of the interstate really makes me wonder if it's some sort of new traffic monitoring equipment or something.....given the fact that the 9930 didn't start going haywire until about the time that the DOT guys wrapped up their work.... But what could they have possibly installed that would have caused this, given they'd already put up traffic radar long ago...... Anyone else seen freeway signs with solar panels sandwiched between them lately? Maybe I'll go take a pic...