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general laser babble
For those who doubt it's effectiveness, I submit that the last
speeding ticket I received was while riding my MOTORCYCLE (91 GSXR-750) at
night! The officer was stationary, about 100 yards away at approx. 60
degrees off-axis from the road. The GSXR had a very "slippery" front end,
with only a 8" X 14" section of its nose perpendicular to the road
surface.
A couple of years ago, Car & Driver magazine published a great
article on fooling laser... they used a large-grilled car as a test
subject (Something on the order of a Cadillac with 4 square-shaped
headlights).. they experimented with removing the license plate,
taping-over all of the chrome, etc, with each step increasing the
effective "cloaking" of the car.. ie, reducing the effective RANGE of the
laser-gun. The absolute BEST METHOD OF CLOAKING THE CAR WAS TO MOUNT A
LARGE (PAR 46) OFF-ROAD LAMP ON THE FRONT BUMPER, APPROXIMATELY CENTERED,
MOUNTED WITH AN INFRA-RED FILTER!!!!! This lamp, which of-course appeared
to be turned-off to the human-eye, was the laser-equivalent of the damn
sun in the sky! It effectively shut the laser-gun down, and caused it to
generate error-codes and/or blank readings (though the gun did
occasionally get a reading off)....
Although the use of the lamp was not 100% effective, it did
SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCE the effective range of the laser-gun 100% of the
time. This, the magazine concluded, would allow the driver ample-time to
react to a laser-warning from a detector. Of course, this last part is
highly subjective, but I have no qualms about trying this strategy if
there was a high occurance of laser-usage in my area!! :-)
The parts for this project can be had cheaply at your local NAPA
store... The only part that I'm not sure about is the IR-Pass filter.
The magazine mentioned that you could get the filter from most scientific
supply companies...
The lamp housing is simply a standard PAR-46 housing (you can get
rubber/chrome/painted steel, etc), and the bulb is a PAR-46 flood. ASK TO
SEE THE LAMP APPLICATON GUIDE AT NAPA TO CHOOSE YOUR BULB! I personally
use par-36 bulbs from NAPA as driving lights... they are listed as
Aviation landing lights, 110,000 Candlepower (GE 4509?).
The lamp application guides at NAPA are distributed by the
different lamp manufacturers (GE/Sylvania/Phillips/Etc...) and contain
useful info on wattage/light-output/voltage/expected life/etc...). Don't
forget to check the expected life of the lamps! There are significant
differences between models in terms of price and expected life!
If I can help provide any info on the above, gimmie a yell.. I've
used the Par-36 lamp setup for about 8 years now on 5 different vehicles.
I HIGHLY recommend it!! (ie.. very cheap for lotsa light!)...
...Joe