got snagged a few days back ...nothing but a warning ... but learned about the new DOPPLER radar.. from a mile away and over a hill was clock .. not just 1 bike but 2 bikes and can do multi targets and tracking ... its your worst nightmare come true .. and radar detectors don't copy a signal from it until its to late ... IT SHOULD BE ILLEGAL TO USE ..COP CAN CLOCK YOU BEFORE EVEN SEEING YOU ... From what i was told

* Last updated by: Badzx14r on 3/14/2010 @ 8:18 AM *

Hey Rot? I think we have traveled a lot faster than your average cop will ever be in HOT pursuit at these speeds. What do they know about speed. They are grabbing granny is about ass fast ass those is ass is hold on... Lets not start in on the pursuit of hap pee nice, things, say nice thing now, Rotty.

Like I can stop you, Rotty? Yuck-yuck-yuck...

.

Enlighten me....... How does he know whitch one he radared if he can't see you???? Mutiple targets?? I think he is pulling yout leg on that one..

gunrunner

I did some research and could not find anything about doppler radar being used for speed detection. Works great for airports and weather stations because their targets are in unobstructed air.

I think he was BSing you.

"Doppler Radar is a weather instrument specially designed to monitor wind turbulence in a storm by bouncing a radar beam off of raindrops or hail, then determining frequency shifts. This allows the Doppler to tell us which direction and how fast the raindrops or hail are moving. That means when severe weather or a tornado starts to form, the Doppler Radar will detect the storms' patterns."......just an exerpt from the web.

Yes, he was BS-ing you......a lot!

Basically, the officer must have a visual on you before he can utilize the radar. He has to be able to testify that you were the one the radar locked on. In most jurisdictions, the radar is used as a confirmation of a visual estimation. Testimony in court would sound similar to:

"I observed a black motorcycle travelling at a high rate of speed. I visually estimated it's speed at 80 mph in a 65 mph zone. I observed it passing two vehicles which appeared to be travelling at the posted speed limit. The motorcycle entered my radar beam at 82 mph, then quickly slowed to 70 mph before I could lock it. This decrease in speed was coincided with the front of the motorcycle dropping quickly, indicating the rider was braking."

Besides that, the radar waves travel line of sight...they don't bend corners or go over hills. It is possible for radar to pick up a vehicle that is out of sight on a flat, straight road.....but the officer would still have to testify as to why it was you he saw.

Usually, a radar detector notifies you when the radar hits the detector. Which gives you about 1 - 1.5 seconds to slow down before the officer can get a reading....depending on distance. Most officers don't drive around with the radar transmitting - they see a vehicle they estimate to be speeding, then transmit. If they are stationary, they may be shooting Lidar.....which means you need a reaction time that rivals the speed of light - Good Luck with that one!!!

Just my 2 cents......not that I have any experience in the whole matter....

All radar is line of sight. It works by sending out a radio signal, the signal hits a target, and then is reflected back to the source. Early radar, WWII type, could detect an object and its direction but not its speed.

In the late 1800’s an Austrian physicist, Christian Doppler, discovered that frequencies change relative to an observer. For example, ... you know how that turbo ZX14 sounds as it approaches and then suddenly, as it passes you the pitch shifts? WWWHHHHEEEEEEE AAAAAWWWWWWHHHHHH (only a lot faster). It is called Doppler Shift, for the apparent shift in frequency.

(SIDE NOTE: Interestingly, in 1912 Vesto Slipher (an Indiana native) discovered red shift; that planets are moving away from us in the universe using Doppler Shift theory. The big difference is that Slipher applied it to light instead of sound. His discovery helped support the Big Bang theory.)

Radar became of age pretty much during WWII. It was used to show location and movement of objects in the sky (enemy airplanes) but could not calculate speed by the radar signal alone. Since then scientists have applied Doppler Shift to radar waves resulting, ultimately, in police radar that could detect a vehicles speed. Big Problemo! When the insurance companies found out about this they started buying radar guns for our local and state law enforcement agencies as fast as they could be made! (they are now supplying Laser guns which can target specific vehicles)

Say you are in a group of cars heading straight at the radar and one of them is going way faster than the others. Radar cannot tell which one is the fastest, only that something within the radar’s beam is moving fast. If several cars are doing 60 and one is doing 80 the radar will register 80. The LEO doesn’t know which one is doing 80 based on radar alone. He has to watch to see if one is moving faster relative to the other cars, or see a bike do a nose plant and all of a sudden the radar speed drops off. Through a combination of visually observing each vehicles speed in relation to the others and eliminating them one by one as they pass the radar the LEO gets his man.

Also, the radar beam widens as it moves away from the source. At a mile away it could be several hundred feet wide, covering 2 lanes of oncoming and 2 lanes of outgoing traffic. The radar will detect the highest speed but the LEO still has to visually identify the speeding vehicle. If there is only one then it's pretty easy. If there are many vehicles going both directions, unless the guy sees like Chuck Yeager, it would be hard to tell which one is speeding from a mile away, however they are trained to do this! The radar doesn’t select the specific vehicle, the LEO's eyes do.

Bottom line, radar doesn’t see over hills, around turns, through trucks, or through fat chicks on F1’s.

Very good info there, X. Long straightaways are one of the places i am most wary because that is the place where cops will expect you to speed and, from what you are telling us, the place where radar will be most effective.

Cresting a hill is where I usually have slowed down to a reasonable speed because I know cops love to wait on the other side of hills. They like to hide behind brush on the roadside and in the median too. Bridges and overpasses seem to be a hiding haven for the cops. If you ever see a car with hazard lights on, under a bridge in the shadows, at mid day, do what you know you should do to be safe and slow down. It is probably a cop and you won't see him with his radar gun in the shadows. The car will look like just an ordinary car because the hazard lights will contrast too strongly to make out any details until you are 20" away. That one would work great at night too so slow down when you see hazards even if you feel lucky that day.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/HBASE/sound/radar.html

still BS'ING

http://www.stalkerradar.com/stalker-speed-sensor/

* Last updated by: Badzx14r on 3/13/2010 @ 7:25 PM *

Radar waves don't bend,nor do they bounch back with an obstruction in the way(like a hill)They have to hit your vehicle and return to the source.If they can't hit yer vehicle with a "straight shot"(or several vehicles in the same area)they can't get a signal back.That's why drafting behind a fast moving car is the ticket on open long roads of higher speed.Stay back for safety,but use the vehicle for blockage.I'll say this-they NOW can get you BEHIND them.And they needn't be stopped to get a reliable speed either.Or coming the other way.Both moving.That's probably old news here anyway.But I was surprised one day to get pulled over while approaching a MHP from behind,who was WAY ahead of me and I didn't recognize what kind of car it was.

* Last updated by: blue07 on 3/13/2010 @ 10:43 PM *

Badzx14r; My parents told me I'd go blind spending so much time in the bathroom. Didn't believe them either. He might've meant LIDAR, but it is way more limited than that.

guys googles say... Results 1 - 10 of about 732,000 for doppler speed radar.

i don't care enough to find the answers.. especially when i seen this system working in a troopers patrol car in Texas . also in Texas they now have a system in the Trooper cars ..that when your plate is run it feeds them all your info ..like if you have current insurance, your driver license, your endorsements, VIN numbers , current state inspection, plates current, so next time you have a trooper behind you in texas ..he's finding out if your current without stopping you .. this is the DPS cars i'm talking about ..not local or city

* Last updated by: Badzx14r on 3/14/2010 @ 8:16 AM *

Badzx14r; He is using doppler radar, all police radar is, but he's greatly exagerating what radar can do. It doesn't have a mile range, and it can't read over a hill. Any radar reads a return signal. It can't go over a hill and down, and then return over a hill and down. It can't pass through a hill, it would bounce off. Even ground penetrating radar has a very short range, from inches to a few meters.
As for the license info, Texas must be way behind the times. Almost all the other states with computers in their cars have been doing that, and more, for years. They can see the registered owners name and address. The year , make , VIN number ,license expiration and any suspensions on the license plate. It also automatically runs the named driver's info. and shows a persons name, address, drivers number, SSN, height, eye color, expiration date and any suspensions.

"A traffic radar processes Doppler return information by analysis of the received frequency spectrum in order to improve target identification and minimize interference and unwanted harmonics. Digital signal processing including transformation of the return information into the frequency domain is employed to provide multiple modes of operation including a stationary mode where either the strongest or the fastest Doppler return signal may be selectively recognized, and moving modes for monitoring traffic moving in both the opposite direction and the same direction as the patrol vehicle. In the moving modes either strongest or fastest signal processing may be elected, and operation when the patrol and target vehicles are moving in the same direction is provided irrespective of whether the patrol vehicle is moving faster or slower than the target vehicle. The speed of the patrol car is determined by recognizing a signature that exhibits an asymmetry due to the cosine effect. Interference and harmonics are detected and suppressed by recognizing unwanted harmonic patterns and eliminating signal magnitudes at the harmonic frequencies. The radar has multi-band capability and recognizes the frequency band of a selected antenna to automatically configure the radar for correct processing of Doppler return information."

All police radar use Doppler type radars,and there are more advanced units out there like laser. it has pinpoint accuracy,unlike the super wide beam that radar has,but most places do not use it, still use the much cheaper radar. small cars bikes are hard to pickup in traffic due to the reduced signal return to the radar. I.E. If a big rig is near, it will bounce more waves back,because of the big flat surfaces of box trucks. I use a radar every day at work,and can tell you that bikes are very hard to get a read, unless its close,or the only vehicle on the road. It WONT pick out an object that is not in line of sight, and are pretty much worthless in heavy rain.

Wow, I posted on the old ZX14 Ninja forum (the one that vanished overnight) that we would be seeing no-line-of-sight radar in use by the cops in 2012 time-frame.

The military has it. Its not that it exactly "sees" the moving object on the other side of the hill, just like counter-battery artillery (or M1A2 Abrams) cannot see the artillery piece that shot at our side. But they can calculate the exact position of the enemy to within a few feet and then fire back at it, within seconds of the projectile leaving the enemy gun/howitzer. Even before the round hits.

But they can't do it as easily with missiles, because not all missiles are ballistic in flight (they have course correction, for example).

Anyway, this science of detecting a target not in line of sight is, I thought, too expensive and bulky to incorporate into a hand-held. Maybe not anymore. LOL Intel Corporation's microprocessors currently have 20 million transistors in the area covered by the point of a needle, and that will jump to 40 million within 5 years. At 40 million, true AI will become possible, but will still take 100s of very expensive processors linked in a neural network to work.

What can be done, because the military and DARPA are doing it, is bounce the radar signal (and it is, essentially, doppler radar) off of an inversion layer (clouds) or trees (like to see on-coming cars on the other side of a blind corner) and ignoring the immediate echo but waiting for the tertiary doppler shift signal. Do it twice, and you know the speed of the object you are measuring.

Can they discriminate multiple targets? Not with the available space of a police car or van. Not until Intel gets up to 40 million transistors on the point of a needle.

To make it stand up in court, they will need to do active tracking, and track the vehicle until it comes into line-of-sight, and then clock it direct, and provide a printout of the active tracking to prove the vehicle they line-of-sighted is the same one they track around the corner.

* Last updated by: privateer on 5/25/2011 @ 10:41 AM *

This cop was bulshittin, and you know this. Man!

I got to use a police radar in my own car while I was training at Grand Rapids police academy. That was in the mid '90s but the science doesn't change. I agree with most everything everyone said about radar but add one thing. The thing they refer to as just 'radar' can be used staionary or mobile of the dash with sensors pointed in any direction but only one direction at once. It IS the officers' responsibility to use good judgement when evaluating each measurement to be 100% certain everytime. This is one case where he gets to be judge instead of enforcer. Having said that there are many things that can go wrong. The radar's effective range is 15-30 degrees straght from a straight line with the unit/sensor. The further off the side of the road the cop is from the direction of travel of the offender the more error in the reading. With basic radar a cop must be in straight line of site to the car's direction of travel meaning head-on. Thus the farther away he can get you the more accurate it is. Second, the 'radar' will favor larger objects over smaller objects. That semi is gonna register over the bike every time. Now all these things don't apply when the instrument used is the Laser unit. This type can be aimed just like it's name suggests with a scope and a site an d if you ever see a cop squinting into a gun that is what he is most likely using. The only drawback to this type which is good for us is that the cop must remain stationary as the laser does not read a second signal like 'radar' and add/subtract that from it's reading. At least this is where technology was last I was professionally schooled on the subject, of which I had particular interest mind you. :)

So anyone's claim that they got something that can see through solid matter and read your speed is unlikely using 'radar' because the science requires you be in direct line of sight. Second there is always the sticky - did the officer actually see YOU breaking the law. They will never get around this with technology unless they are actually seeing you through a camera or imaging device of some sort and can prove it. Which bears the thought, why don't they just use a speed camera instead of wasting money on a super computer.

I use a Radar everyday at work too...

FPS-16 upgraded to a RIR716, this is a FPS-16. It has a 16 foot mesh reflector.

And here is a link for Radar basics.

* Last updated by: BearsZX72 on 5/26/2011 @ 10:00 AM *

That picture is of the Woomera Australia Blue Streak / Mercury Tracking Station FPS-16 located at the Red Lake Tracking Station.

Here is the link:

Red Lake (Australia) Tracking Station

You lifted the photo from this page. Are you saying you live in SoCal but work in Australia, or what? LOL

privateer,

Yes I know exactly where I lifted the photo from. Good detective work. When you do a Google image search for the FPS-16 that's one of the better pics of that Radar. So, no I don't work in Aus and yes I do live and work in SoCal.

Here is a pic of one of the two FPS-16 Radar's that I work on and operate. Our Radars are upgraded to RIR-716, so they are a little faster and better than the FPS-16.

Foreground is the Radar and in the background are two Telemetry systems. All used for aeronautical research tracking here is SoCal.

Used for tracking low orbit spacecraft, space debris, weather balloons, and sub-orbital aircraft. Are they C band ?

This is not state-of-the-art stuff, its just upgraded 1970s technology.

When I was working at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville Alabama, I saw the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense)integration tests including the AN/TPY-2 radar. Now that is a fast radar array, especially for being milspec mobile.

All the tests were at White Sands, and I never got to go, but if you have seen stills lifted from video, you will often see the segment where the missile does a loop moments after leaving the launch tube. While it is doing that spiral loop, it is side scanning the area of the sky the AN/TPY-2 is telling it to look at, and discriminating to determine the true target. By the time it straightens out (a mere .10 second) it is locked on and just a few seconds from destructive impact.

Failed a lot in early testing, but they got the bugs worked out.

Its funny, public released photos call the loop a "energy management maneuver.... to burn off excess propellant".

Sure, and my bike is a moped.

By the way, this kind of radar is where the new police radar is going to be coming from. The processors, transmitters, and receivers are fast enough to do radar imaging in 4 dimensions, including predictive imaging.

Used for tracking low orbit spacecraft, space debris, weather balloons, and sub-orbital aircraft. Are they C band ?

Maybe...

PM sent

PM replied to. Strange how small the world really is, as we may have talked on the phone or attended the same conferences back in the day when I worked at Redstone Arsenal.

So true, so true! Very small world.

Hey bros do your police force use the New Radars that are in full swing in South Ozz now, as from the 1st July we now don't use Registration stickers as these units can detect 6 plates per second ! I think is great to stop uninsured %$^#$@%$^ idiots on the road, but as said before even though they save a fortune on Admin & Costs of which don't pass on to the road users !

* Last updated by: bean07 on 7/4/2011 @ 11:56 PM *