The Best Radar Detector with The Fewest False Alarms, The Escort Passport 8500

 My Rig On The Right

"License and Registration Please"

First for the disclaimer. Commercial trucks are prohibited by law from having a radar detector onboard.

Having said that you will probably find one in over half of the eighteen wheelers rolling up and down the highways. I have one in mine and they'll have to pry it from my cold dead hands.

A Safety Device

I consider my Escort radar detector to be a safety device as well as a tool to help me avoid tickets.

Once while I was hauling freight between Houston and Phoenix I was coming down off a long hill on IH-10 near Fort Stockton, Texas when the Escort Passport gave an alert on the K band. I wasn't speeding but I knew that there was a cop up ahead somewhere. Knowing that I began to be more aware and as I topped a hill there was a trooper just on the other side, parked across the inside lane with his lights on, waving traffic over, protecting an injured cow that had been hit by another truck. Because I was aware of his presence ahead of time I was able to react faster and avoid what could have been an awful wreck.

I began to call other truckers behind me on the CB and alert them of the dangerous situation.

Avoiding Tickets

On a two thousand mile run it is going to happen that you let your foot get a bit heavier in some places than you normally would, such as down a steep grade or maybe just toward dinner time when you subconsciously want to get to the nearest town for a bite to eat.

With today's fuel costs though most truckers make an effort to keep their speed down to save at the pump. Also, many companies equip their trucks with GPS and can track driver speed and even dock drivers pay or safety bonuses if they are speeding too often.

A radar detector is not a license to speed but it will tell you many times if there is a cop up ahead and help you avoid a ticket if you happen to be over a few miles an hour.

Why The Escort Passport 8500 Rules The Roost

I've owned somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen radar detectors, beginning with the nearly breadbox sized "Fuzzbuster" that was the first sold back in the seventies. Now there is only one that I will own, the 8500.

Before I stated that it is illegal for over the road truckers to own any radar detector. It is still legal in most all states for passenger cars and trucks to use one however the cop up ahead may know that you have one of the other brands on the market and that may bias his decision in stopping you.

How does he know? Believe it or not, because of the "no detectors in trucks" rule, trooper began equipping their cars with "radar detector detectors". I know it sounds crazy but it is really true. Every receiver of radio signals also transmits a very weak signal from the circuits that process that signal. A hetrodyne of the frequency it receives will be broadcast out a short distance. Knowing what this frequency is, police equipment manufacturers sell these detectors that many state police use to know if a trucker is operating a radar detector. It's a dirty business that seems to go around and around as radar gun makers, radar detector makers and radar detector detector makers all try to outsmart each other.

One good feature that the Escort Passport 8500 has is Smartshield VG-2 cloaking. Inside the detector are components that leak far less radiation that competitors products plus a metal shield around them which acts as a "faraday cage" or chamber from which these signals cannot escape and be detected by the cops.

I know this because in two years of using this I have never been stopped or questioned about where my radar detector is, while many of my buddies who have tried Cobra's, Whiltlers and other models have. Those brands just don't have as good of a cloaking device, nor the ability to weed out false alarms. Another good stealth feature is that the power cord acts as a remote display. You can hide the detector anywhere, in a Kleenex box, for example and use the volume control and led alarm light on the power cord to control the unit.

The Truth

The truth is that no radar detector is going to eliminate all false signals. There are simply too many commercial alarm systems, military radars, and so on, using the same channels that police radar does. However, a good detector can eliminate cross channel pollution from many sources and give you more real alerts. Most false alerts occur in the X band, which is now rarely used by police except in some very small towns. The X band is heavily used by alarm companies and your unit will give an alert around many drug stores, banks and convenience stores. For that reason I turn the X band to the lowest sensitivity setting when I am out on the open road.

Good Circuits Cost Money

High quality electronic circuits that can discriminate between false signals and police radar as well as leak less radiation are expensive to manufacture. For years Cincinnati Microwave, the make or the Escort series, have held the lead in development of these circuits and patents in technology to reduce false alarms.

For that reason, in my observations over the years, that is why you will find an Escort radar detector in 90% of professional drivers vehicles both at home and on the job.

One thing is for certain, I won't leave home without mine.

Here are the Features and Specifications.

Product Features

Technical Details

• Operating Bands: X-band - 10.525 GHz +/- 25 MHz; K-band - 24.150 GHz +/- 100 MHz; Ka-band - 34.700 GHz +/- 1300 MHz; Laser - 904nm, 33 MHz Bandwidth
• Radar Receiver/Detector Type: Superheterodyne, Varactor-Tuned VCO, Scanning Frequency Discriminator, Digital Signal Processing (DSP)
• Laser Detection: Quantum limited video receiver, multiple high-performance laser sensors
• Display Type: AlGaAs 280 LED Matrix/Text; Bar Graph, ExpertMeter, or SpecDisplay; 3-level dimming, plus dark mode
• Power Requirement: 12VDC, negative ground
• Programmable Features: Power-on indication, power-on sequence, signal strength meter, AutoMute, audio tones, city mode sensitivity, display brightness, dark mode, radar/laser bands
• Sensitivity Control: AutoSensitivity, Highway, and City
• Mute and AutoMute: Yes
• Auto Calibration Circuitry: Yes
• SmartShield VG-2 Immunity: Yes
• Dimensions: 1.25" H x 2.85" W x 5.32" L
• Warranty: One year
• Try to avoid the temptation to buy one at a truck stop. You'll find the best prices at Amazon.com Here is a link to their site....