INTRO
So as you may have seen in this post (https://www.rdforum.org/threads/105666/), I have a couple of radar mounts that I can use to turn the V1G2 and R7 backwards to test their rear horns moving towards the radar source rather than away from it. So I had a couple of hours last weekend when I could try this out against my Stalker ATR.
THE DETECTORS
- V1G2 – (fw 41019) – A mode, X-Band off, CF on, K Verifier on. CF set to K wide and Ka 33.700-33.900, 34.600-34.850, 35.400-35.600.
- R7 – (fw 134.141.114) – Highway mode, Rear balance 100%, Ka 1/2/4/5/6/8, K wide, KF on, TSF on, K Block on, MRCD off, X-Band off.
THE RADAR GUN
Stalker ATR
Here are some pics of how the gun was positioned on a wooden post on the side of the road.
First is with the gun basically straight down the course.
This is with it angled 25-30 degrees across the road.
And this is with it about 45 degrees across the road from behind.
THE COURSE
Well, you seen it before, it’s the Van Alstyne course in Van Alstyne, TX. My Stalker is really putting out the signal since I changed the batteries, which wouldn’t hold a charge very well anymore, in the handle recently. So for straight on testing, I had to go back beyond the crest that usually is where the course is terrain limited.
Here's a video run through of the course at 2x speed.
RESULTS
Results are provided in a table by detector and run, a table ranked by avg. and median detection (except for the ~45 degree runs, as I didn’t do an odd number of runs there).
Ka-Band 34.7 (gun pointing straight down the course)
Commentary
- Since I was only testing against one gun, I decided to do 5 runs apiece to get a little bigger sample size.
- Pretty close, but the V1G2 edges the R7 out by anywhere from 1% to 5%.
- Note that the V1G2 was more consistent its results. This can be seen from looking at the median detection versus the avg detection. In the V1G2’s case, the median detection is 5583 meters vs an avg detection of 5588 meters. Pretty close. In the case of the R7, the median detection was 5370 meters vs. an avg detection of 5426, showing that the R7 had more variability in its runs.
- Note that the R7 was set at 100% on the rear balance. So if you are running your R7 at a reduced rear balance to help with K-band falsing, you are losing rear detection range vs a V1G2.
Ka-Band 34.7 (gun angled 25-30 degrees across the course)
Commentary
- I decided to angled the gun a bit and see how that affected things.
- In this case, the weaker signal caused the crest of the hill to become a terrain limitation (as it usually is). So not much was really learned from these runs as both detectors were alerting at the top of the crest. So I only did 3 runs here.
Ka-Band 34.7 (gun angled ~45 degrees across the course)
Commentary
- I decided to angle the gun ever more to see if that would change things.
- It was getting late, I wasn’t thinking about the fact that having an even number of runs was going to screw up getting a median run for this test. So no median here unless you want to scratch the 4th run for each detector. If you do this, the avg run for the R7 is 4739 and the median run is 4678. For the V1G2, the avg would be 4758 and the median run would be 4852. So both detectors had some variability for these runs.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I know we’ve been thinking about a better way to test rear antenna sensitivity, as driving away from the radar gun adds latch into the equation, which can make things less than apples-to-apples if one detector has more latch than the other. This was an interesting test that hopefully should remove that variable.
I wanted to do this with the R7 at 100% rear balance to establish a baseline. As I mentioned above, if you are running an R7 at less than 100% rear balance, then than you are going to be losing rear range vs. the V1G2. Maybe I can try testing the R7 at some lesser rear balance settings in the future, but the fact that folks seem to have quite a variance in how they set the rear balance (I’ve seen some as go low as 30%) will probably require testing quite a few settings. There’s always more testing to do….lol.
I will end with my usual admonishment: This is just one test. Don’t base your opinion of a detector on just one test. You need to look at various tests, by various people, at various times, on various courses to try to get to a complete picture of a detector. So make sure to look at as many tests as you can, and find out as much information as you can so you can make an informed opinion about a detector.
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