What brand of radar detector are you using? Also what features does your particular radar detector have and how well does it work? I am looking to purchase one for a long trip that I'm going to do this summer. Thank you
Radar Detectors
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ToddC
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I have used Escort in the past. Got tired of monitoring it. Plus a close friend is a local sheriff.....trainer for radar and lidar and ECT ECT. They have developed speed detectors that will always get you......they can track multiple on coming vehicles....and the speed difference between them. I gave up trying to beat them. Lost too many times.....
:cop2: .plus at over half a century old.....ya get smarter.Best way to cover miles fast is.......find a rabbit....stay back a quarter of a mile. Don't push it. Slow down when you lose them from sight. And the best way to cover serious miles is......don't stop, except for gas. 300 plus miles on tank.
Just my two cents......
ToddC
Some guys swear by them. I sold my detector years ago and I doubt I'll ever buy another. In my area, the automatic doors on the grocery stores set the detector off so often, it wasn't worth keeping on. I've read now that the new cars with their ability to detect if you're coming too close to another vehicle (or straying out of the lane?) will also set them off.
I brought the subject up on the new laser detectors with a Lieutenant in the Washington State Patrol. His face broke out in a grin from ear to ear as he told me the new radar/laser detectors let you be the second person to know you were getting a ticket.
Like Todd, I look for a rabbit. Let him be the one who sets the pace far enough ahead of you to see his brake lights come on when he sees the LEO. Otherwise, I go with the flow.
There's some good discussions on radar detectors over on ADVRider. What you'll find there is the car radar detectors have some serious limitations in being able to warn you either audibly or visually on a motorcycle. They also aren't weather proof. When you get something that'll work, you're talking some serious $$$. And in some parts of the country and Canada, I believe, it is illegal to have one. So where you might've only received a warning without one, you're now going to pay the full price.
The best advice I've heard if you're pulled over, is just to simply admit you were wrong. (Don't say how fast you were going though! That's a different subject to pursue.)
Chris
I brought the subject up on the new laser detectors with a Lieutenant in the Washington State Patrol. His face broke out in a grin from ear to ear as he told me the new radar/laser detectors let you be the second person to know you were getting a ticket.
Like Todd, I look for a rabbit. Let him be the one who sets the pace far enough ahead of you to see his brake lights come on when he sees the LEO. Otherwise, I go with the flow.
There's some good discussions on radar detectors over on ADVRider. What you'll find there is the car radar detectors have some serious limitations in being able to warn you either audibly or visually on a motorcycle. They also aren't weather proof. When you get something that'll work, you're talking some serious $$$. And in some parts of the country and Canada, I believe, it is illegal to have one. So where you might've only received a warning without one, you're now going to pay the full price.
The best advice I've heard if you're pulled over, is just to simply admit you were wrong. (Don't say how fast you were going though! That's a different subject to pursue.)
Chris
This is correct. My Valentine One has saved me from many a ticket over the years, but now it's basically a $300 noisemaker.
wjbertrand
Ventura Highway
My Escort Redline has paid for itself a couple of times. What I like about the Escort models is that they all come with an integral earphone jack. I plug that into the AUX input on my Starcom1 with an isolated patch cord and give it priority, you can't miss it when it goes off.
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These days , I just go with the flow , so I am not the wart on the butt of progress , hopefully somewhere in the center of the pack .
Otherwise try not to go more than 5 -over , if alone .
Otherwise try not to go more than 5 -over , if alone .
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Beltronics 955 with Mark Parns visual alert attached.
Works great - saved me a few times. I may not be a big speeder but if I want to pass someone - it helps to see if anything up ahead of me is radaring.
Out west (in the wide open) it has picked up a few patrols in enough time that I had plenty of time to slow down.
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I've owned a couple of myself, and been on many many road trips with people who owned ones beyond that. In every single case they were noise makers with so many false positives as to be worthless I've never found them to be of much use.
I don't doubt many folks have been saved by them. But if you have to slow down a hundred times to get saved ones, or even a higher ratio, what real use are they?
I don't doubt many folks have been saved by them. But if you have to slow down a hundred times to get saved ones, or even a higher ratio, what real use are they?
A cop told me anyone who wears Hi-Vis on a Motorcycle is usually a safety conscious older guy...They tend to leave you alone unless your really cooking along
My experience is it's the little one horse towns that are just itching to catch a speeder. They typically have no tollerance. I make sure Im 3 to 5 under so there is no question about it. Never owned a detector but a cheap one would be nice to have for the small town traps. Im guessing they probably don't have much invested in their clocking equipment.
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Does not play well with others.
Requires incentives to complete daily classroom assignments.
Inattentive in class.
Seems to have a problem with loosing.
This student has hit rock bottom and started to dig.
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Does not play well with others.
Requires incentives to complete daily classroom assignments.
Inattentive in class.
Seems to have a problem with loosing.
This student has hit rock bottom and started to dig.
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Got my only performance award while running with an Escort: it never beeped. My strategy now is an McCruise control and set it based on the Zumo GPS speed readout on the open road. Not worth trying to make time thru the little towns.
SmashVol
Site Supporter
I am looking for a good one also, sorry you have not gotten any good answers. There are some reviews online to sift through and in the meant time I am using the Waze app on the phone which is owned by Google and kept up to date by users of the locations of road hazards, Police etc. Good luck and let us know if you find one.
Honestly my experience is even more profound: If you're not doing something 'blatant', the cops tend to leave riders alone. At least here in good ole' Pennsyltucky.
Put another way, the "unspoken agreement" hereabouts is if you don't act like a d*ck, look overtly like a d*ck or otherwise do something that say "Hey look, I'm a d*ck!" the fuzz will leave you be.
Case in point: this afternoon I was out riding around just for the hell of it. Doing about 75 in a 35... Which was - albeit "reckless" by the book - also just going with the flow of traffic. (On a big 4-lanes + turning lane rural highway where everyone does at least 65, and 35 is just silly).
I blew by the cop that's -always- sitting there in a little burg called New Kingstown... he ignored me, just like he did everyone else doing 70-80. He's there to bust the morons doing trip-digits.
Sure enough, 27 seconds later, some guy came blazing by me on some variety of NinjGixBusa - ZZZZZZzzzzz-RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrraow! Had to be doing MINIMUM of 120, likely more. Truly cooking it. Shot by me at ~75-80 like I was standing still.
Shockingly, 4 seconds later, the cop comes blazing by, top speed, after him.
~2 miles later, I pass the guy pulled over & doing his best "perp walk" next to the bike.
Pretty sure a radar detector would not have 'saved' him... Pretty sure if I had one - and thus was driving along at 35 - that would have been equally silly.
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Shuey
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All good comments. Here's 2 cents more.
My experience with Escort detectors were good. False reports were minimal and not a problem for me. Then again, I mostly ran the detector on major highways and back country roads. Not waterproof . . . no big deal. Put the detector in a waterproof box and hard wire it to the bike, maybe with a power switch and connect it in to your sound system. You don't need to know what kind of radar detector is out there, when you hear a warning, you slow down. So, I always put mine in a black box, and mounted it to the side.
If you're really blazing along, say 20+ miles per hour, it's worthless. You'll be tagged before you hear the warning. Like others have noted, when approaching city limits, pay attention to the speed limits and just go with the flow.
Like others, I now subscribe to going with the flow or following the faster car (rabbit) passing me, hanging back about 1/4 - 1/2 mile.
Shuey
My experience with Escort detectors were good. False reports were minimal and not a problem for me. Then again, I mostly ran the detector on major highways and back country roads. Not waterproof . . . no big deal. Put the detector in a waterproof box and hard wire it to the bike, maybe with a power switch and connect it in to your sound system. You don't need to know what kind of radar detector is out there, when you hear a warning, you slow down. So, I always put mine in a black box, and mounted it to the side.
If you're really blazing along, say 20+ miles per hour, it's worthless. You'll be tagged before you hear the warning. Like others have noted, when approaching city limits, pay attention to the speed limits and just go with the flow.
Like others, I now subscribe to going with the flow or following the faster car (rabbit) passing me, hanging back about 1/4 - 1/2 mile.
Shuey
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sky.high
Site Supporter
I have an older escort cannot remember which model, its hard wired to visual alert and permanently buried on the head light cowl, I agree with much of whats already been said but would like to add I do find it useful in letting me know a cop car is close by when travelling the back roads, I now it works cause I ignored it once and inadvertently overtook the cop, stupid! Fortunately they said it was my lucky day and let me go.
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+1. I had a radar detector years ago because I thought the lights and alerts were pretty neat. But a lot of stores' door openers and who knows what would give me false alerts.
Even though they've improved the tech (along with LE's tech improvements) I've since felt that speeding tickets are pretty easy for me to avoid and my radar farkle money could be better spent elsewhere.
jfheilman
Site Supporter
I have the Adaptive unit. Water proof and easy to use. Highly recommend it.
Has it saved me? I can't tell you yes or no, but since I have used it since 2005, I have not gotten a speeding ticket.
The one I have gotten, is why I bought the detector. I would like to know when I am being "painted".
It does offer a good reminder to check your speed.
Easy to use and designed for motorcycles.
Has it saved me? I can't tell you yes or no, but since I have used it since 2005, I have not gotten a speeding ticket.
The one I have gotten, is why I bought the detector. I would like to know when I am being "painted".
It does offer a good reminder to check your speed.
Easy to use and designed for motorcycles.
drrod
Site Supporter
Lots of info on this forum. Takes a while to go through it but I think you may find it informative and useful.
https://www.rdforum.org/index.php
Modern radar guns, operated properly, will render a radar detector next to useless. That, combined with many sources of radar that use the same frequencies, and a radar detector is getting less and less useful.
https://www.rdforum.org/index.php
Modern radar guns, operated properly, will render a radar detector next to useless. That, combined with many sources of radar that use the same frequencies, and a radar detector is getting less and less useful.
Okay. I fess up. I just bought a radar detector on eBay.
$3.99 with free shipping.
For that price, it was worth the novelty.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/312120250184
I can see it now... I'm pulled over for speeding. The trooper walks up and sees the radar detector. It is red after all. Hard to hide. So he asks me what that is and I say, "Oh...that's just a toy. I bought it really cheap on eBay." And he replies, "Well, I was only going to give you a warning, but now with that "toy", you'll be getting a ticket. I guess it wasn't so cheap after all, was it?"
Chris
$3.99 with free shipping.
For that price, it was worth the novelty.https://www.ebay.com/itm/312120250184
I can see it now... I'm pulled over for speeding. The trooper walks up and sees the radar detector. It is red after all. Hard to hide. So he asks me what that is and I say, "Oh...that's just a toy. I bought it really cheap on eBay." And he replies, "Well, I was only going to give you a warning, but now with that "toy", you'll be getting a ticket. I guess it wasn't so cheap after all, was it?"
Chris
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Uncle Phil
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That's why if you are going to have one, you bury it in an 'unseen' location. I run Escort Passport 8500s into my comm system on all of my ST1100S and they have saved my bacon more times than I can count - especially on backroads. However on the slab, the laser detection just tells you whether you're probably fixin' to get a ticket ...
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