Valentine One vs. Escort Max360: Head-to-Head Radar Detector Comparison

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  • December 8, 2015

  • December 8, 2015

  • 34 mins to read

Valentine One vs. Escort Max360 Comparison Review

Valentine One vs. Escort Max360? Both are high end radar detectors. Both have arrows. Both cost hundreds of dollars.

The V1 has been around for ages and the main trick up its sleeve is arrows. Valentine has held a patent on the feature and Escort has long said that you don’t need arrows if you have better filtering because the detector will stay quiet if it’s a false alert and beep if it’s real. Well Valentine’s patent on arrows has expired and lo and behold, Escort has brought arrows over to their jack-of-all-trades detector, the Max2, and called it the Max3..60. The Max360 is loaded with bells and whistles and copies of many of the features (including the arrows) from the V1. Is it a better radar detector though? Let’s find out.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.vortexradar.com/2015/12/valentine-one-vs-escort-max360-head-to-head-comparison/

Band Segmentation and Custom Sweeps

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  • December 5, 2015

  • December 5, 2015

  • 25 mins to read

Band Segmentation and Custom Sweeps. They’re expert settings available on some radar detectors that can significantly help improve a detector’s performance. However, if you set it up incorrectly, you may inadvertently prevent your radar detector from alerting you to legitimate police radar which… kinda defeats the whole purpose of having a radar detector in the first place. You can wind up getting tickets while thinking you’re protected. Additionally, different detectors implement this feature differently and the specific way you need to program it may even vary depending on where you live, so things can be a little confusing. The confusion combined with the risks of getting it wrong leads lots of people asking how they should program the detector they bought for the area that they live in.

Since this gets asked so frequently, I figured it’d be good to do an article going into all of this so that we have a solid reference to understand exactly what’s going on, what the benefits and risks are, and finally how to program the detector that you choose for the areas where you live and drive. (Note: This is applicable only for the US and Canada. The principles are the same everywhere, but the frequencies you need to scan for vary abroad.) Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.vortexradar.com/2015/12/band-segmentation-and-custom-sweeps/

How RDR and Ka Guard Work

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  • December 4, 2015

  • December 4, 2015

  • 7 mins to read

Ka Guard and RDR are filters that help our radar detectors filter out false alerts on Ka band that happen due to poorly designed radar detectors like older Cobras that leak RF signals, but how do the filters actually work?

Escort has a patent explaining their filtering technique for RDR that I read through some time ago to learn the details of what’s actually going on under the hood. 🙂

Let’s take a look at the general idea behind how the filter works and then take a look at the science and math as we watch some sample signals actually make their way through the individual components of a radar detector.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.vortexradar.com/2015/12/how-rdr-and-ka-guard-work/

How to Program your new V1 & YaV1 from Scratch

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  • December 3, 2015

  • December 3, 2015

  • 1 mins to read

This walkthrough shows you how I set up and program my V1 with YaV1 from a brand new install to help guide you through setting up yours. 🙂

Things you’ll need:

Permanent link to this article: https://www.vortexradar.com/2015/12/how-to-program-your-new-v1-yav1-from-scratch/

Radar Detector Acronyms & Terminology

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  • December 3, 2015

  • December 3, 2015

  • 18 mins to read

Here are the common radar detector acronyms and laser jammer terminology you’ll see when reading about countermeasures.

ACC – Adaptive Cruise Control. These in-car safety systems can sometimes trigger false radar/laser alerts on our countermeasures.

ALP – AntiLaser Priority. Currently the best laser jammer on the market. They are very sensitive, receive continued updates, and can jam both the older easier to jam guns as well as the latest lidar guns with anti-jamming technology. These are the current top pick for laser jammers. You can find them for sale online here.

ALPR – Automatic License Plate Recognition. Police sometimes have these camera systems for automated license plate scanning and tracking.

Bands – Police radar guns operate on different frequencies. A radar band is simply a range of frequencies. There are a whole bunch of RF bands. Different radar gun use different frequency antennas (higher frequency antennas like Ka band are smaller and more compact than lower frequency antennas like K or even X band.) For more information on what’s going on and why, as well as the significance of receiving alerts on various bands, watch this video.

BS/RDR – Band Segmentation and Radar Detector Rejection. Features available on some Escort/Beltronics radar detectors. RDR helps filter out false alerts from leaky radar detectors. Band segmentation is used to turn on and off different portions of the entire range of Ka band. Turning some segments off increases performance while also disabling frequencies which have only false alerts and no legitimate radar signals, something you may experience more of by disabling RDR. The equivalent in V1-land are Custom Sweeps and Ka Guard.

BSM – Blind Spot Monitor. Many newer cars are equipped with blind spot monitoring systems and depending on the make and model of the car, it can cause a radar detector to false alert to K band. Newer radar detectors have special filters designed to filter out false alerts from BSM’s, but not all of them can be filtered out. GM and Acuras are especially difficult to filter. These are one of the most annoying false alerts and the most challenging to filter out. A modern radar detector is recommended to help deal with these newer false alerts.

CAS – Collision Avoidance System. Many modern cars are equipped with a variety of collision avoidance systems such as automatic braking, smart cruise control, blind spot monitoring, and so on. These systems typically use radar, laser, and cameras to monitor what’s going on around the vehicle and some of these systems can cause your radar detector to false alert so it’s recommended to use a modern radar detector that has the ability to filter out many CAS false alerts.

CD – Concealed Display, especially the Valentine 1’s secondary remote display accessory. See this video to learn more about CD’s.

CM – 1) Countermeasures that you can use to avoid speeding tickets such as radar detectors and laser jammers. 2) Center mass, as in the center of your grill or front license plate area that officers may target with their lidar guns.

C/O – Constant On. There is where a police officer leaves their radar gun on the whole time while they are parked or driving around. This is easy to detect from a distance. Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.vortexradar.com/2015/12/radar-detector-terminology/

How to Find Out what Radar Bands, Radar Guns, and Laser Guns are used in your area

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  • November 30, 2015

  • November 30, 2015

  • 4 mins to read

In different parts of the country they use different radar guns and laser guns. For example, in some areas K band is in use while in other areas it’s not at all and if you turn K band off in your detector, you can get rid of all the false alerts that you’d otherwise have to rely on filters to deal with. Very cool. Same thing with X band. Additionally, some places in the country use newer and more sophisticated lidar guns with anti-jamming technology. If you’re wondering what’s in use in your area as well as in other areas that you’ll be driving to, here’s the best way I’ve found to see what’s in use in what areas.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.vortexradar.com/2015/11/how-to-find-out-what-radar-bands-radar-guns-and-laser-guns-are-used-in-your-area/

How to Set Up your Max360

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  • November 30, 2015

  • November 30, 2015

  • 1 mins to read

Once you’ve purchased a Max360, you’ll want to customize it to help quiet down false alerts and fine tune the experience to what you prefer. You can do this by changing the Max360 settings. Here’s a tutorial for the Max360, walking you through the different settings and options to help you choose what is best for you. 🙂

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.vortexradar.com/2015/11/how-to-set-up-your-max360/

Escort Max360 Review: The Best Radar Detector if you want a Fully Loaded and Easy to use Radar Detector with Arrows

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  • November 30, 2015

  • November 30, 2015

  • 28 mins to read

So the Max360 is Escort’s latest and greatest, newest radar detector with all the bells and whistles, including arrows! It takes their previous best selling radar detector, the Max2, and gives it a second antenna pointing backwards so that it can have arrows just like the V1, and now you have an automatic, plug-and-play, ease to use radar detector that can do it all for you without minimal setup, no extra accessories required, and it’s now basically like the jack of all trades. The Max360’s abundance of useful features and convenient user experience has made it one of the most popular radar detectors on the market for the everyday driver. Let’s take a look through this Escort Max360 review and find out if it’s the best radar detector for you too. (Updated November 2017)

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.vortexradar.com/2015/11/escort-max360-review/

POP Radar

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  • November 30, 2015

  • November 30, 2015

  • 13 mins to read

POP radar is a type of radar specifically designed to defeat radar detectors. It’s a very very short burst of radar (16ms or 67ms) that’s designed to be just long enough to register a vehicle’s speed but too short for most radar detectors to pick up on. Sounds pretty scary, but it has some big problems too and, because of this, it really isn’t in use and it’s generally recommended to turn POP detection off on your radar detector altogether.

Let’s go into some detail now about POP radar, what it is, how it works, how well it works, its problems, legalities, pros and cons of enabling POP detection on your radar detector, and so forth.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.vortexradar.com/2015/11/pop-radar/

How to Set Up Your Uniden LRD950

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  • November 29, 2015

  • November 29, 2015

  • 8 mins to read

Once you’ve purchased a Uniden LRD950 from here or here, you’ll want to set it up. This tutorial will walk you through getting the detector configured properly and customized for you.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.vortexradar.com/2015/11/how-to-set-up-your-uniden-lrd950/

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