Conclusive Test - V1 vs. Bel 995 - on Ka and K bands

[leo68]

Yeh, I am the one that started the other thread on 15 years of V1 ownership and going to sell all my stuff on eBay, thinking the Bel 995 was just as good.

Well......... as I was boxing everything up, I took a few hours to do some final testing. It turned out to be very informative.
A LEO was using Ka in both instant and constant-on mode. He sat there for about an hour. Nice. Further down the same road is a "this is your speed" sign on K band. What a setup! It's a busy road so I did not stand out too much by making multiple passes. I made 18 passes (9 round trips). No I am not kidding. I wanted to be sure what I was seeing was repeatable (it was).

I had a V1 3.826 (POP on, Advanced Logic mode, large L) and Bel 995 4.5 (POP off, Highway mode) mounted high on the windshield, but below the tint strip. On various passes I used both units at the same time and one at a time, to rule out interference between units from their LO's. I also swapped positions. I covered all the bases to compare the units.

K band - sometimes one unit would alert slightly more than the other, but it was random. I am convinced they are just about equal.

Ka band - Sheeze! You got to be kidding. I thought the reviews said the Bel was just as sensitive. Kids, that's not the case here. In every single pass, the V1 alerted a LOT sooner than the Bel 995. The PSL was 40MPH, and at that speed the V1 would start alerting a at least 15 seconds sooner. This is critical time to slow down. This is critical sensitivity needed to detect Ka in instant-on mode being used on other targets ahead of you.

40MPH is equal to .01111 miles/sec. So, 15 seconds at this speed is 0.17 miles. That may not sound very far, but look at a clock for 15 seconds and it's a huge difference.

Has anyone else done a side-by-side comparison like this? Let me know your result.

PS, the V1 did J-out once on the LEO. Other cars were around. One of the probably had a Cobra RD. However, it had already given me plenty of notice. Not a big deal to me, it's VR way of dealing with POP. On the Bel 995, if I enable POP I get random alerts, that's a lot worse, so I keep POP off on that unit.

Where you using both units at the same time? Do you know your not suppose to?

http://guysoflidar.com/twodetectors.html

[gdavis9999]

Yeh, I am the one that started the other thread on 15 years of V1 ownership and going to sell all my stuff on eBay, thinking the Bel 995 was just as good.

Well......... as I was boxing everything up, I took a few hours to do some final testing. It turned out to be very informative.
A LEO was using Ka in both instant and constant-on mode. He sat there for about an hour. Nice. Further down the same road is a "this is your speed" sign on K band. What a setup! It's a busy road so I did not stand out too much by making multiple passes. I made 18 passes (9 round trips). No I am not kidding. I wanted to be sure what I was seeing was repeatable (it was).

I had a V1 3.826 (POP on, Advanced Logic mode, large L) and Bel 995 4.5 (POP off, Highway mode) mounted high on the windshield, but below the tint strip. On various passes I used both units at the same time and one at a time, to rule out interference between units from their LO's. I also swapped positions. I covered all the bases to compare the units.

K band - sometimes one unit would alert slightly more than the other, but it was random. I am convinced they are just about equal.

Ka band - Sheeze! You got to be kidding. I thought the reviews said the Bel was just as sensitive. Kids, that's not the case here. In every single pass, the V1 alerted a LOT sooner than the Bel 995. The PSL was 40MPH, and at that speed the V1 would start alerting a at least 15 seconds sooner. This is critical time to slow down. This is critical sensitivity needed to detect Ka in instant-on mode being used on other targets ahead of you.

40MPH is equal to .01111 miles/sec. So, 15 seconds at this speed is 0.17 miles. That may not sound very far, but look at a clock for 15 seconds and it's a huge difference.

Has anyone else done a side-by-side comparison like this? Let me know your result.

PS, the V1 did J-out once on the LEO. Other cars were around. One of the probably had a Cobra RD. However, it had already given me plenty of notice. Not a big deal to me, it's VR way of dealing with POP. On the Bel 995, if I enable POP I get random alerts, that's a lot worse, so I keep POP off on that unit.

Where you using both units at the same time? Do you know your not suppose to?

http://guysoflidar.com/twodetectors.html

This question was already addressed, but will cut and paste it here again:

"

zfactor wrote:
did you have them both turned on at the same time in the car or did you test one then the other.. while making sure one was powered off..??

"On various passes I used both units at the same time and one at a time, to rule out interference between units from their LO's. I also swapped positions. I covered all the bases to compare the units."

.... when using one unit at a time, I pulled the power on the unused unit."

A little background on me. I am an RF engineer and work on communication systems. My research work routinely deals with LNAs, Mixing and Downconversion, IF filtering, LOs, Modulation and Demodulation. I also work on DSP algorithms as it applies to signal filtering. You can find this technology in a common cell phone. RDs use the same engineering principles and design techniques. I suppose this is the primary reason I am interested in the work you do here.

[Audi Quattro]

your test means nothing. you should know not to run RD's together at the same time while they are on.

[GTO_04]

your test means nothing. you should know not to run RD's together at the same time while they are on.

If you read his post carefully it says he also tested them one at a time!

On various passes I used both units at the same time and one at a time, to rule out interference between units from their LO's. I also swapped positions. I covered all the bases to compare the units.

Looks to me like he did test them one at a time!

GTO_04

[gdavis9999]

your test means nothing. you should know not to run RD's together at the same time while they are on.

GTO_04 is correct. I ran the detectors one at a time as part the testing. This is stated three times before in this thread:
In the original posting, and in postings:
- Fri Sep 08, 2006 10:09 pm
- Sat Sep 09, 2006 7:44 pm

I was thinking perhaps the reason the V1 did so much better than the Bel 995 on Ka band is the frequency of the radar guns (Stalker DSR-2X and Stalker II). However, these models run at approx 34.7 GHz http://www.guysoflidar.com/tech.html which is exactly at the mid-point of the Ka band. You often find the RF front-ends of receivers have the highest Q and maximum sensitivity at the mid-point, so I cannot contribute the better V1 performance due to that. At this point, it appears the V1 has significantly better Ka performance than the Bel 995.

Keep in mind I really do not care which one has better sensitivity. I just want the best Ka performance I can get (the other bands are important, but most of my encounters in this city are Ka). So the only reason to perform these tests is to determine which RD to keep. I had both a V1 and Bel 995. I was actually going to sell the V1 to start with (see my "15 years of ownership" thread). I really liked the form factor of the Bel 995 and it's voice alerts and easier programming. However, I must have the best Ka performance.

I have now returned the Bel 995 and will use the V1.

[knothole]

your test means nothing. you should know not to run RD's together at the same time while they are on.

If you read his post carefully it says he also tested them one at a time!

On various passes I used both units at the same time and one at a time, to rule out interference between units from their LO's. I also swapped positions. I covered all the bases to compare the units.

Looks to me like he did test them one at a time!

GTO_04

This is shows that a lot of people don't totally read a post or other replys.

[leo68]

your test means nothing. you should know not to run RD's together at the same time while they are on.

GTO_04 is correct. I ran the detectors one at a time as part the testing. This is stated three times before in this thread:
In the original posting, and in postings:
- Fri Sep 08, 2006 10:09 pm
- Sat Sep 09, 2006 7:44 pm

I was thinking perhaps the reason the V1 did so much better than the Bel 995 on Ka band is the frequency of the radar guns (Stalker DSR-2X and Stalker II). However, these models run at approx 34.7 GHz http://www.guysoflidar.com/tech.html which is exactly at the mid-point of the Ka band. You often find the RF front-ends of receivers have the highest Q and maximum sensitivity at the mid-point, so I cannot contribute the better V1 performance due to that. At this point, it appears the V1 has significantly better Ka performance than the Bel 995.

Keep in mind I really do not care which one has better sensitivity. I just want the best Ka performance I can get (the other bands are important, but most of my encounters in this city are Ka). So the only reason to perform these tests is to determine which RD to keep. I had both a V1 and Bel 995. I was actually going to sell the V1 to start with (see my "15 years of ownership" thread). I really liked the form factor of the Bel 995 and it's voice alerts and easier programming. However, I must have the best Ka performance.

I have now returned the Bel 995 and will use the V1.

Have noticed that some radar detectors detects Some Ka frequencies better then other. Maybe it's the way the antenna is pre set at the factory?

[GTO_04]

It could be the tuning of the Ka RF circuits in addition to the antenna. Ka band is so much wider than X and K which are single frequencies.

I found my V1.7 to be noticeably better than the 985 at 33.8 GHz, but very close (100 ft. better on a 2 mile course) on 34.7 GHz. That is running them one at a time, with the other one being turned off.

I don't know why, but the performance differential between 995 and V1 was much greater than that of the 985 and V1. Like I said before, maybe my 985 is a factory freak.

Next thing I want to test is 1.7 vs. 1.8!

GTO_04

[V1 Dave]

Next thing I want to test is 1.7 vs. 1.8!

I would like to see GOL test this as well as Ka is supposed to be only slightly better and everything else the same except 1.7 flunks out on POP, has no Ku or euro.
Laser is better on a 1.8 than a 1.7 but who needs it? It's actually too sensitive.
1.8 actually needs a laser two step mode because a 1.8 will pick up laser cruise control every time and even though a 1.7 always led the competition on laser it never picks up laser cruise control.

[GTO_04]

Next thing I want to test is 1.7 vs. 1.8!

I would like to see GOL test this as well as Ka is supposed to be only slightly better and everything else the same except 1.7 flunks out on POP, has no Ku or euro.
Laser is better on a 1.8 than a 1.7 but who needs it? It's actually too sensitive.
1.8 actually needs a laser two step mode because a 1.8 will pick up laser cruise control every time and even though a 1.7 always led the competition on laser it never picks up laser cruise control.

I have had the same laser reception experience as you. 1.7 does not pick up the Trailblazer HMSL as much and it doesn't pick up the Infinity, etc. laser cruise controls at all. I don't get laser falses a lot, not enough that I start ignoring them. Just enough that it scares the daylights out of me when I do get them LOL!

The tech at VR told me that 1.8 is more sensitive on 35.5 GHz Ka and should otherwise be the same as 1.7. I have not been able to confirm or deny this up until now. I don't have easy access to a 35.5 radar right now.

GTO_04