What do the symbols or letters for radar detectors mean?
I have an old Escort Passport, and want to get the Escort 8500 x50. Can someone give me a list of what all the letters stand for? like K band, Ka band, X band and stuff like that.
They refer to the ranges of frequencies designated by the FCC for police radar applications.
X-band is the oldest, and covers a range from 7 to 12 GHz. Most police radars no longer use X-band, as it was superceded by the more common K and Ka bands.
K-band is from 20 to 40 GHz, and Ka covers a slightly wider range, from 18 to 40 GHz.
The detector provides this info to help you root out false alarms, for example, if you get an warning everytime you go down a certain street, and it's the older X-band, it's probably from the automatic door from the old supermarket across the street. Conversely, if you get X- and Ka-band warnings at the same spot one day, it's possible some smart cop is hiding there and using the automatic door for cover, hoping an unaware driver is thinking his detector is giving him a false alarm. Some police use lidar, which actually uses pulses of laser light instead of radar, and newer detectors can pick this up, as well.
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January 13th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
They refer to the ranges of frequencies designated by the FCC for police radar applications.
X-band is the oldest, and covers a range from 7 to 12 GHz. Most police radars no longer use X-band, as it was superceded by the more common K and Ka bands.
K-band is from 20 to 40 GHz, and Ka covers a slightly wider range, from 18 to 40 GHz.
The detector provides this info to help you root out false alarms, for example, if you get an warning everytime you go down a certain street, and it's the older X-band, it's probably from the automatic door from the old supermarket across the street. Conversely, if you get X- and Ka-band warnings at the same spot one day, it's possible some smart cop is hiding there and using the automatic door for cover, hoping an unaware driver is thinking his detector is giving him a false alarm. Some police use lidar, which actually uses pulses of laser light instead of radar, and newer detectors can pick this up, as well.
References :
January 13th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
You also have "L" Laser/Lidar, "VG2" police radar detector-detector, and a Safety/Emergecy Vehicle/Road Hazard (different letters for different models) alarm that isn't really used anyway.
References :