K Band Illumination

[bryanearll]

After about 3 hours of detailing the car this afternoon, it was time to take sweet baby out for a spin.

Sometimes you just have to let the girl have her legs, you know?

So that fix satisfied and beginning the cruise back to Pasadena and the radar detector lights up to the Maxmum on the K band and just stays lit. It's a top of the line Escort a since I'm merging onto the 210 in La Canada off the 2 (the runway), I'm just cruising 70mph. But the detector stays pegged for an uncomfortable and unreasonable amount of time. Now there's nothing behind me and nothing in front of me, so maybe someones off the freeway and out of line of sight and I'm a law abiding citizen. No problem, no ticket, but it did make me wonder about airborne police.

What band does the CHP use on their helicoptors? I assume that since airborne radar isn't in the front or rear line of sight that a radar detector won't pick up somebody above you.

Regarding detectors in general, I don't have a lot of faith in X band signals as they seem to come up all the time, K-band is always spot on.

That said, someday in the future I'll have the experience to take the car to the track where speed really belongs. A general question then for the 996 crowd; I haven't really seen the high side of 6th gear yet, does it just keep going and going?
Bryan

[ttweed]

I assume that since airborne radar isn't in the front or rear line of sight that a radar detector won't pick up somebody above you.

I don't have a radar detector and don't know that much about it, but AFAIK, radar is not used from the air in CA to determine speed of vehicles. The only air enforcement of speeding laws is on long stretches of open freeway and they use VASCAR.

A general question then for the 996 crowd; I haven't really seen the high side of 6th gear yet, does it just keep going and going?

Well, I don't have a 996 either, but I do know that the effects of aerodynamic drag increase by the square of a vehicle's velocity, so the faster it goes, the harder it gets. The 996 may have a low Cd, and a lot of power, but punching a hole in the air at 150mph is a lot harder than at 75, so I would say no car can just "keep going and going", especially in high gear.

[Mike]

I like the car mag story where these two journalists were on the way to Laguna Seca to watch the races. They brought their radar gun to check the speeds of the race cars on the track. They also related how they messed with a couple of wreckless import drivers on the freeway, shooting the radar gun at the cars speeding with detectors and watching as the drivers would suddenly slow...

[Doug]

Guilty as charged.

No, it wasn't me, but it sounds like a lot of fun. I did take the gun to a flying field for r/c airplanes and foolishly volunteered to get some speeds on some 120-mph-plus pattern planes with tuned-pipe 2-cycles. To get an accurate reading, they need to fly right at you!!

--Doug