Radar Guns Blog

We welcome all radar gun enthusiasts and the curious readers that want to learn more about radar guns. The purpose of this blog is to inform about the novel uses and developments of radar guns, as well as new products, accessories and everything relating to radar guns and related sports. We hope you will find our blog informative or just plain fascinating.

13 Aug
I was just reading through an article on new radar guns given to the Winnebago Police Department.  The radar guns were given to them by the Minnesota Department of Public Safety.  The really nice thing about these new guns is that they’re LIDAR, which is a Laser-style speed gun, and they give continuous speeds on a vehicle, so if someone is speeding up or slowing down they’ll be able to see this and still get a reading on the fastest, and therefore most over the limit, the drivers goes.

I hate to admit it, but this might catch me on occasion, as I often hit the brakes when I see a police officer.  If they can see multiple speeds instead of just the one, they’d see my higher speed and THEN my lower speed and know I became aware of them.
 
Constant speed readings from a radar gun can help in sports as well.  If you’re a golfer or baseball player you can take a look at your swing speed and see if you’re speeding up and slowing down correctly.  Some golfers reach maximum swing speed too early or late and aren’t consistent with their approach.  This hurts their distance and accuracy.  The same thing goes for a batter in baseball.  You want your bat moving at its fastest when it connects with the ball.  Using a baseball radar gun can help this greatly.

It’s good to see Minnesota is outfitting their police officers with the latest in crime fighting radar guns!
07 Aug

Here’s a cool speeding ticket-overturned story: A Brisbane millionaire challenged the accuracy of radar gun and won!  Scott Flynn was booked for allegedly driving his black Lamborghini (beautiful car!) 137 km/h in an 80 km/h zone on Mt Glorious Rd near Samford last year.
He didn’t believe the speed from the radar gun, so he hired a lawyer who grilled police in Brisbane Magistrates Court about accuracy of the radar. According to the court decision, a police expert conceded the radar gun had faulty calibration and this calls into question the accuracy of the gun’s readings between October 6, 2010 and June 19, 2011.
The interesting thing is that nobody except Flynn (who wouldn’t mind paying a legitimate fine) blamed this radar for inaccuracy. Just think of how many people got tickets during this eight month stretch!
This is a fairly rare occurrence, but it does show the necessity, especially for police but also for baseball scouts and other radar-users, to accurately calibrate these guns.  Radar guns are reliable devices when used correctly, but if they start to give faulty readings you know there’s a problem that has to be dealt with immediately, especially when legal fines are potentially at stake.
 
The calibration tests are easy, but apparently some police officers don’t take the time to set up their equipment appropriately.
Be happy, drive carefully and keep reading RadarGunsBlog for more on all things radar!
23 Jul

I’ve just read a funny radar-related story.
An off-duty police officer entered a school zone within the legal speed limit. As he drove by a traffic camera (equipped with radargun) took a picture of his license plate.
Confused by the flash, he decided the settings must have been wrong so he circled around and came back driving even more slowly than before. The same thing happened again.
After what were to him two false photos taken on his license plate the police officer drove by it one more time veeeeery slowly and for a third time the camera took a picture.  He decided that the radar camera must be broken and went home.
A few weeks later he got three tickets.  They were for not wearing a seat belt!
Let this be a lesson to all of you who want to avoid tickets from police radar guns or speed traps.  If you focus too much of your attention on one rule you’re bound to forget you’re breaking another.  Fasten your seat belts AND drive within the legally posted limit.
11 Jul

I’ve just read an old, but pretty interesting article about modifying radar guns so they can identify suicide bombs worn under the clothing.
William Fox and John Vesecky cataloged the most common arrangements of looped wires used to construct “suicide vestsand developed software that can identify the radar cross-section of each. The results were good, 85% per cents of “terrorists” (volunteers wearing suicide vests) were detected by this modified radar gun.
That’s really cool, maybe soon all police officerswill have such radar guns and would be able to prevent explosions! It’s really interesting, what radar gun they used?
Link to the news – http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/27/modified-radar-gun-identifies-suicide-bombers-up-to-ten-meters-a/?icid=eng_bomb_art
05 Jul

Looking back 14 years ago at perhaps one of the best pitching performances by a rookie I had ever seen on cable television was recently retired Cubs pitcher Kerry Woods. It was May 6th, 1998 when the rookie took the mound for his 5th start in a row. He was on a hot streak and the coaches wanted to see if he had more in him. But what they were about to see was something they would not soon forget. K-k-k-k-k Kerry’s 20 strikeouts was quite eye-opener for many major league teams because not only did it show great potential, it represented a backbone to the Chicago Cubs.

The point to this story is that for athletes, especially pitchers, their performance needs to be at their peak almost all of the time; otherwise coaches will just look for the next big athlete to replace them. Luckily, for many pitchers, radar guns greatly assist in maintaining the highest standard of performance. Capturing pitch speeds ranging from a slower 70 MPH to a remarkable 115 MPH set by pitchers in the MLB, radar guns help record and evaluate whether any individual is doing the right thing when it comes to training, conditioning and consistency.

28 Jun

I`ve come to the conclusion that technology helps push athletes to new heights and develop more skill.

How?  Well, I just read an article about Lucas Giolito, a young baseball superstar who hit 100 mph on a radar gun in one of his games! 100 mph!  Amazing!

No doubt he was chasing that number on the radar gun, and for a kid that young to hit triple digits he must have worked really hard.  That probably wouldn’t have happened if not for radar guns tracking his progress.

In this way, radar guns are really useful to measure your skills.

Maybe you also have some outstanding skills and you definitely need a radar gun to measure it. We highly recommend the Bushnell Speedster III for your everyday radar needs and testing yourself day in and day out!

20 Jun

I just read an article about Eugene, Oregon. The police department of Emerald City (one of several nicknames of this city) is helping the community be proactive in keeping their neighborhoods safer. After training, volunteers work in teams and monitor trafficon neighborhood streets.

With the recording of speed violators, warnings are then sent out to drivers. Volunteers are allowed to borrow radar guns for this activity. So, if you live in Eugene, Oregon and don`t like your neighbors, borrow radar gun and catch them exceeding the speed limit.  Just make sure you have a really good policeradar gun like the Decatur Genesis II so you know you’re accurately measuring their speed.
14 Jun

I`ve just read a cool article about mobile phone service called Trapster. This service was designed to warn drivers about radar traps and red-light cameras.

Trapster uses wireless Internet or a phone`s GPS capabilities to determine location, and gives users an alert if they are approaching radar traps or cameras. The service`s database is improved by users, who can send markers for trouble spots with a few keystrokes. This isn’t exactly a brand new technology, but these types of services are becoming more widespread daily.

And do you think that police officers are concerned about it? Nope! They hope that Trapster and services like it will encourage drivers to slow down. I’m not so sure they’re right but I hope it helps some drivers operate their vehicle more safely.

So forget about speeding tickets from radar guns and traffic cameras. Trapster and other similar programs are here to stay!

04 Apr

My jaw dropped as soon as I heard about how much money Virginia Law Enforcement collected from paid revenue by speeders in 2010 after finally being released a couple of days ago. They claimed a whopping $101 million across 75,000 miles of roadway by 279 different police agencies! But that’s not all, after every police agency reported their income; Virginia raked in about $238 million in traffic fines! That’s a lot of dough I’d like to have in my pocket!

Another surprising fact about catching all of the speeders is that none of them were caught from traffic cameras. Instead, every single speeder was issued a ticket by officers using radar guns. Radar guns have always been a very reliable utensil for officers when used to catch even the fastest of drivers because of their reliability and accurateness during action. The weather-proof guns allowed officers to stay out on the job no matter how poor the weather conditions might have been. With a maximum range of about 6000 ft, no speeder could ever escape the wrath of an armed officer!

Just an extra fun fact, the officers call a mile stretch of I-295 the “Million Dollar Mile” because of the town’s penchant for issuing millions of dollars in speeding tickets every year, mostly to out-of-state tourists.
09 Mar

I just read over this article that showed a couple of unique cars that could definitely pack a punch in any race. The Geneva Motor Show is home to some of the fastest, coolest and most importantly, street-legal automobiles on the market for a remarkable 82 years running!

One fast and exotic car that caught my attention was theFerrari F12berlinetta” because it accelerates from 0-100 km/hour in just 3.1 seconds!!! That’s incredible! Also, the Ferrari Motor Co. created the “Ferrari California” (which was also in the show) and it accelerates from 0-97 km/hour in just 3.8 seconds!! Those are some fast cars!! Their speeds are read by radar guns similar to the Bushnell Speedster III Radar Gun and then recorded straight into an information book.

Some speed tests are conducted with the help of the Bushnell Speedster because of its remarkable accurateness and ability to read up to 200 mph at a distance of up to 1500 ft! The Bushnell Speedster features RF technology (radio frequency technology) which in turn allows the radar gun to support a separate radar speed display wirelessly; resulting in quicker mobility and more precision with each reading.

Just something extra I found that was actually very cool! A test driver operated a “2012 Chrysler 300 SRT8″ at very high speeds and drifted with such extraordinary talent… some might call him James Bond. Check it out!