Re: radar traps!

[Paul Nicholson <paul@eisusa.com>]

At 8:55 -0400 4/28/97, DFAUTOHAUS@aol.com wrote:
>Greetings
>
>A dealer friend of mine has a detector thats on the market from Comtrad
>Industries that claims to make your car "disappear" by using FM "chirp" for
>radar and intrared "noise".They claim they will pay tickets during the first
>yearas long as the limit was not exceeded by30% or 15mph.
>My friends first long trip was from Atlanta to Key Largo FL and then back to
>VT. At first he had it positioned in the car incorrectly and got stopped.
>Then he read the manual, positioned the unit accordingly and rolled thru any
>number of traps  at 80 plus with no problem.
>Sounds to good to be true. Terrific if it works. Anybody else tried one
>yet???
>
I'm an electrical engineer and I guess, I must of fallen asleep in class
when we covered "intrared" noise. If there is anbody out that that was
awake, please fill me in. It's never too late to learn.

I haven't tried one, but it does sound too good to be true. I'm now sitting
on a commuter flight and picked up my laptop to respond to this message
after seeing a advertisment from Comtrad in the seat back magazine. In it,
Comtrad is advertising a device which utilizes your home wiring as an
antenna for "better TV reception on local networks". Better than what is my
question. It "... simply activates the giant antenna that already exists in
your home... "

Just because an antenna is big doesn't mean it is necessarily good. The
arbitrary shape of the home power wiring is less than ideal as an antenna.
It does not always help to have an antenna so big and spread out that it
recieves the TV signal in phase and out of phase along it's convoluted
reach, the signals will simply cancel themselves out. Whether their antenna
works in well or not is probably a hit or miss proposition, based on the
pecularities of the house wiring, TV signal strength, frequency and a lot
of other variables.

Before I'd run speed traps in my Audi with their radar masking device, I'd
research the product more. In my estimation, your friend is just plain dumb
lucky or maybe the other cops liked Audi's.


Paul