Valentine 1 or Bel STi Driver? Need Help, Making a Purchase.

[Buford T. Justice]

Eightball, the originator of this thread, is a newbie, as suggested by his limited posts to the forum.

For V1 vs. STi comparisons, one needs to think of how a newbie can best make use of the detector. How easy is it to understand, change modes, learn what the typical sources are along their commute, etc.

The V1 is the sensitivity king, undisputed champion of first detect, first alerts in all bands.
It is unforutante that it is so difficult to make use of its many features.
It is laughable to think that an inexperienced user can even begin to make use of its features.
The human interface, the ergonomics of the V1 are simply antiquated. The Valentine mantra of marketing to the few, the proud, the selective, will keep the V1 in the dark ages for some time to come.

The STi is a stellar detector because of its excellent overall performance, superior antifalsing algorithms (that work without destroying sensitivity) and more importantly because of its ease of use. The STi is also compatible with a laser jamming adjunct, the Bel (R75?) and Escort's ZR3 system.

(This is my personal opinion, Happya$$, Jimbonzzz, and others.)

Is the V1 the most sensitive because of internal electronics or antenna horn design? My money is placed on horn design. Another words (though not possible) if I were to stick the V1 antenna design on the STi, the STi would become the "most sensitive." Most people see it as "most sensitive" as being "best depth." Most sensitive could mean above average depth detection with the best wide angle off-axis coverage. I feel the term, most sensitive, is NOT being used correctly.

If and when someone can crack into the units and officially measure the noise floor, S/N ratio, on both units by-passing the antennas, I'll consider both even.

[happya$$]

Eightball, the originator of this thread, is a newbie, as suggested by his limited posts to the forum.

For V1 vs. STi comparisons, one needs to think of how a newbie can best make use of the detector. How easy is it to understand, change modes, learn what the typical sources are along their commute, etc.

The V1 is the sensitivity king, undisputed champion of first detect, first alerts in all bands.
It is unforutante that it is so difficult to make use of its many features.
It is laughable to think that an inexperienced user can even begin to make use of its features.
The human interface, the ergonomics of the V1 are simply antiquated. The Valentine mantra of marketing to the few, the proud, the selective, will keep the V1 in the dark ages for some time to come.

The STi is a stellar detector because of its excellent overall performance, superior antifalsing algorithms (that work without destroying sensitivity) and more importantly because of its ease of use. The STi is also compatible with a laser jamming adjunct, the Bel (R75?) and Escort's ZR3 system.

(This is my personal opinion, Happya$$, Jimbonzzz, and others.)

Is the V1 the most sensitive because of internal electronics or antenna horn design? My money is placed on horn design. Another words (though not possible) if I were to stick the V1 antenna design on the STi, the STi would become the "most sensitive." Most people see it as "most sensitive" as being "best depth." Most sensitive could mean above average depth detection with the best wide angle off-axis coverage. I feel the term, most sensitive, is NOT being used correctly.

If and when someone can crack into the units and officially measure the noise floor on both units by-passing the antennas, I'll consider both even.

insidercw3 is a technical guru. What he has said pretty much nails it. As his signature says "the truth is out there". This is one thing I LOVE about the STI and that is the fact that when it alerts you look for the cop not for the grocery store. IMO the STI is Bel's and Escort BEST detector ever. Is it perfect? No. If they could have added the features of the X50 along with the ramp up of the X50 I would be in heaven. If that would have happened we would have had the ULTIMATE detector and I would venture to say the PERFECT detector. Well also the 33.8 fix too.

[Buford T. Justice]

Eightball, the originator of this thread, is a newbie, as suggested by his limited posts to the forum.

For V1 vs. STi comparisons, one needs to think of how a newbie can best make use of the detector. How easy is it to understand, change modes, learn what the typical sources are along their commute, etc.

The V1 is the sensitivity king, undisputed champion of first detect, first alerts in all bands.
It is unforutante that it is so difficult to make use of its many features.
It is laughable to think that an inexperienced user can even begin to make use of its features.
The human interface, the ergonomics of the V1 are simply antiquated. The Valentine mantra of marketing to the few, the proud, the selective, will keep the V1 in the dark ages for some time to come.

The STi is a stellar detector because of its excellent overall performance, superior antifalsing algorithms (that work without destroying sensitivity) and more importantly because of its ease of use. The STi is also compatible with a laser jamming adjunct, the Bel (R75?) and Escort's ZR3 system.

(This is my personal opinion, Happya$$, Jimbonzzz, and others.)

Is the V1 the most sensitive because of internal electronics or antenna horn design? My money is placed on horn design. Another words (though not possible) if I were to stick the V1 antenna design on the STi, the STi would become the "most sensitive." Most people see it as "most sensitive" as being "best depth." Most sensitive could mean above average depth detection with the best wide angle off-axis coverage. I feel the term, most sensitive, is NOT being used correctly.

If and when someone can crack into the units and officially measure the noise floor on both units by-passing the antennas, I'll consider both even.

insidercw3 is a technical guru. What he has said pretty much nails it. As his signature says "the truth is out there". This is one thing I LOVE about the STI and that is the fact that when it alerts you look for the cop not for the grocery store. IMO the STI is Bel's and Escort BEST detector ever. Is it perfect? No. If they could have added the features of the X50 along with the ramp up of the X50 I would be in heaven. If that would have happened we would have had the ULTIMATE detector and I would venture to say the PERFECT detector. Well also the 33.8 fix too.

I can give that one a x2 for about 90% :wink:

[Ven0mizer]

Always great to know where your ticket is being served from

If you own the STi, you will be getting served from the 33.8 range because you didn't detect it.

Well, as my post in the beltronics forum stated, I picked up a charger cop 1/2 a mile away around a 90 degree turn on vietnam vets and he was using 33.8Ka, so my ticket was not served on this day, HOWEVER I'm sure I will eat my words sooner or later until they fix this bug or maybe mine is already fixed with an alpha version of the patch? it was made in 23-07? who knows...All I know is that I'm not sure this bug occurs _all_ the time. I would rather have poor off-axis detection in one range, then all ranges as I live in a very hill and curve infested environment.

[MEM-TEK]

*****

[Buford T. Justice]

Is the V1 the most sensitive because of internal electronics or antenna horn design? My money is placed on horn design. Another words (though not possible) if I were to stick the V1 antenna design on the STi, the STi would become the "most sensitive." Most people see it as "most sensitive" as being "best depth." Most sensitive could mean above average depth detection with the best wide angle off-axis coverage. I feel the term, most sensitive, is NOT being used correctly.

If and when someone can crack into the units and officially measure the noise floor, S/N ratio, on both units by-passing the antennas, I'll consider both even.

Part of the answer is due to the horn design. Valentine holds the patent for a fast flared microwave horn with optimal wave guides. See:

US Patent 4878061: Broadband wide flare ridged microwave horn antenna

Other parts of the answer include which part of the microwave spectrum the radar horn is optimally tuned for, and how big or how flared the radar horn is. And yet still other parts of the answer concern whether the radar horn is manually tuned or electronically tuned, and whether either microwave diode or microstrip sensors are used within the radar horn. Yet other parts of the answer include how clean the reference signals are from the local oscillators and how well noise is dealt with within the shielded local oscillator circuitry. And finally, it also depends on each manufacturer's patents for particular local oscillator designs and how good the circuitry is at detecting harmonics of the local oscillators, and how good the patented digital signal processing circuits and processing algorithms are.

Jimbonzzz (the undisputed "Professor"), please jump in and verify if everything I have said is correct or if I have left anything out.

But in other words, there is a LOT more to how good a RD is than just the size and design of the radar horn itself, and it also depends on the design approach used by each manufacturer. Some may start with the local oscillator and microstrip (if used instead of diodes) electronics first and then work their way out to the final horn design based on what is desirable and upon size limitations imposed by the artistic designers who have already created the overall RD case size and appearance, whereas other manufacturers might start with the horn design first. While the horn design is important, it isn't nearly as important as it was 20 years ago when what could be done with electronics to process the received radar signals was incredibly more limited.

The STi is a completely different animal compared to the V1. The STi uses two radar horns, both of which are folded designs which prevent local oscillator signals from leaking out through the horns, making the STi completely undetectable to RDDs well into the foreseeable future. Quite frankly I am shocked that Belscort has been able to achieve the sensitivity numbers which they have, considering that the horn designs are anything but conventional.

That's my two cents worth!

Oops, I forgot to mention, the speaker on the STi features a plug at the ends of its wires rather than the speaker's wires being soldered directly to the circuit board as on the V9XX and RX-XX models. I guess that Bel finally has figured out that the speakers do indeed blow prematurely due to poor quality control in China?

Best regards to all,

--Michael

I understand all this. But my point being (and I'll now go in the opposite direction) would the best radar detector having the best S/N ratio still be considered "the best" if the horn design was the worst?

[jimbonzzz]

Jimbonzzz (the undisputed "Professor"), please jump in and verify if everything I have said is correct or if I have left anything out.

I'll definitely agree with the point you're tryting to get across: there's a number of ingredients that add up to make a detector perform.

Case in point: you mention the horn design of the STi being what makes it stealth. But there are a number of other ingredients to this as well. For example, the LNA's in the front end do the bulk of the filtering, since they have high reverse isolation. But they don't do the job completely: they need the horn design and the highpass and lowpass filters to do the job 100%. Take any one part out of that equation and it would no longer be a stealth detector.

The same thing goes for detector sensitivity...

BTW: the VR patent you referred to is for the "old" antenna design used in the V1 1.7's... current units no longer use a flared design.

[MEM-TEK]

*****

[Buford T. Justice]

Valentine's patented horn design does allow them to get a few extra dB of sensitivity out of the horn, but the gain isn't earth shattering.

MEM-TEK and jimbonzzz


Interesting statement.

So would it be safe to say that the STi may NOT have one of the best horn designs because of the importance of stealth engineering, but just may have the BEST sensitivity circuitry?

Also with V1 higher gain horn, doesn't that mean narrower lobe reception?

[groovyipo]

V1 vs STi and 9500i, I am still trying to decide what works the best on busy highways of IL and in not too long in CA or MA.

Reading all these posts is driving me crazy. All those opinions and none of them really unbiased.