Some time ago, I read about a new, undetectable radar unit that was available for police departments. I emailed Mike Valentine (of V1 fame) and got this response:


Hello Jonas,

We briefly captured a BEE III and conducted methodical testing on it. No
detector that we tried could find the POP mode signal. Every detector we
tried found the normal (non-POP) signal from the BEE III.

We also found out that the POP feature has a serious accuracy flaw that we
will discuss on our web site as soon as our report is finished. The BEE III
instruction manual says that the POP mode must not be used for writing
tickets, only for monitoring traffic. The normal mode must be used for
writing tickets.

Of course, we are looking into what it will take to do a good job of
detecting the POP mode's 67 millisecond bursts. The most formidable
challenge will be to see if the POP bursts can be successfully
differentiated from the short burst interference in the same area of Ka-band
that spews from certain BEL and Uniden superwide detectors in other
motorists' vehicles.

The BEE III operates on (or near, depending on frequency drift) 34.800 GHz.
Certain high-volume detector designs from BEL and Uniden transmit burst type
interference in the area of 34.6 to 34.9 GHz due to a poorly conceived
electrical design. The signals are quite strong and the Valentine One has
special hardware and software that intentionally disregards short burst
signals in this frequency range, assuming them to be false alarms from
poorly designed radar detectors.

It remains to be seen what needs to be done to rise to the challenges
provided by the BEE III in light of the BEL/Uniden interference issue. Be
assured that we are working on the problem.

Cheers,

Mike Valentine


Here's a link to their site which has more info:
https://store.valentine1.com/pop/

FYI.


JonasM

 

What's scary about this is that the officer can easily switch from POP to non-POP mode, making it pretty simple for him to nail you before you can figure out the signal.

With other radar guns they are always firing the gun at traffic, giving off a signal from a mile away, so you know to slow down with your detector. With this gun, they can leave it in POP mode to monitor traffic, then switch to non-POP ONLY if the car in question is going faster so they can write a ticket.

 

that is an intersesting letter from mike valentine. i would like to see where their findings lead them...i will definitely consider upgrading from my passport 8500 to a valentine 1.

 

SkLz325,

Valentine hasn't solved the problem - NO one has - his website, as every other radar detector site is for marketing a product.

Valentine's assumptions are flawed, he assumes 1) you know your actual speed, 2) their gun is shooting on the high side (there is a percentage range +-X%). On his site, he has an example called "This POPS for you." On this page it asks for your actual speed, distance and your gunn oscillator. When you run the program it says - if your actual speed is XX, the ticket will come back as XX+Y%. It has been posted several times on this forum that our speedometer is off by Z%+, so you as a driver in your S2000 have absolutely NO clue as to your "actual" speed to begin with!!

I own a radar detector. It is nice if you are in traffic and the officer is using a recognizable band, such as X, K, K extended (Ka) as you will pick up the signal bouncing off of some other cars when the officer is sampling traffic. You know to slow down, problem is: most of the time I can see brake lights ahead and know the detector is going to go off. On empty roads, you are toast - you would be the "sampled traffic."

The letter above says that Valentine is working on a system where the signals from other detectors won't appear as false signals. Good luck - the Valentine 1 already has one of the highest number of falses (ask anyone who owns one) because it is one of the most, if not THE most, sensitive radar detector out there. This fact was written up in the highly acclaimed Car and Driver article in 2002. More falses, mean the more likely you ignore your detector. Look at the group with Rick Hesel that got nailed last year. 13 cars got tickets, 1/2 of them with V1s, most of them with radar detectors. 13 cars, and from what I saw, no one got out of the tickets or that would have been posted all over this board, especially since they originally posted all about the event.
https://www.s2ki.com/forums/showthread.php?...?threadid=54625

The new problem in AZ and also in California, at least on I-10 East of L.A. towards the AZ border, is that the highway patrol is setting up small radar sources a mile or so apart from each other. When you drive on those stretches now, watch for X, K, and Ka sources. When you past certain mile markers or emergency phones your detector goes off. You start to slow down, look for a highway patrol and see nothing. Pretty soon you start getting used to the alert going off. The challenge is that it goes off EVERY minute and unless you look at the detector EACH time you hear the signal to see if there are two bogeys you will get nailed. Most of the time I have gotten lucky in my S2000, I look over it says 1 source, I go for another few seconds and look over and it says 2 all of a sudden. If I hadn't been looking at the detector and taken action to slow down, I may have received a ticket, but I doubt it since a majority of the time I could see a car braking hard in front of me. Most cops don't leave their radar gun on ALL the time.

My bottom line: a radar detector may be nice if you are in light traffic and the traffic authorities are using a recognizable source, you are paying constant attention to your detector and the terrain in front of you. If I did it again, I would probably save my money and not have purchased a detector. My eyes and common sense have saved me more often and more accurately, the one benefit to my detector (Passport 8500) is that it has SWS, which is used in Arizona.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by walkabt
[B]Good luck - the Valentine 1 already has one of the highest number of falses (ask anyone who owns one) because it is one of the most, if not THE most, sensitive radar detector out there.

 

Not true??? Sorry I am getting defensive, but look at the chart and read the article again please.

I said "the Valentine 1 already has one of the highest number of falses (ask anyone who owns one) because it is one of the most, if not THE most, sensitive radar detector out there." I did not say THE MOST, I said one of the most. Trying to make the detector capable of determining a flash of radar like the POPIII will increase this.

The below chart is from the C&D article referenced by Zeke...in Highway mode the Valentine 1 tied for most falses in the number one position, with two other competitors.

From C&D article (link posted above) - in the Valentine 1 pages:
"Falsing in highway mode is a common occurrence with most of these detectors

 

It's all kind of funny...if the radar manufacturer would encase the oscillator, they could leave it running and there would be no error (other than the standard error for radar equipment). If they're not happy wiht that, they could use a heating element, such as a high-power transistor thermally attached to the oscillator to keep it's temp up.

 

Point taken Walkabt. Didn't mean my post as a attack anyway. ; )