French-made Sagem Mesta Ku-band photo radar has been out of production for decades and is little seen today in Europe. |
At the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show Cobra Electronics introduced a line of new radar detectors which, among other things, claim to "provide expanded protection capabilities to warn against even the fastest radar and laser guns on the market, including the new Ku band," according to their press release.
Ku band? Cobra's announcement had the competition scratching their heads. Nobody else in the industry was aware of the arrival of a fourth radar band (frequency).
Ku band is a European frequency centered at 13.45 GHz,
slightly above the ancient X band and well below K band (24 GHz) and Ka band (33.4 to 36.0 GHz) which together comprise nearly 95 percent of the radar guns on the road today in this country. No domestic manufacturer has ever produced a Ku-band radar and, based on recent conversations with their chief executives, none has the slightest interest in doing so.
One manufacturer in recent years did consider Ku band for European sales. Government regulatory moves in the UK have dramatically reduced the maximum permissible power output by police radar, effectively making this U.S. manufacturers' wares impossible to sell there. (Photo radar, with its ultra-low power output, and lidar (laser) remain their tools of choice for traffic enforcement.) For that reason, MPH Industries, one of the oldest U.S. radar companies, built a prototype Ku-band radar to see if it would address the European problem. After an evaluation, it was decided to use a modified Z-Series model instead. But it is a K-band unit.
I examined one of these, dubbed the Z-45, at the International Association of Chiefs of Police annual conference in Boston. The company had it on display to test domestic reaction, which proved to be underwhelming. MPH executives expressed no interest in releasing any type of Ku-band radar in the U.S.
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In the States, Ka band is the frequency of choice today and no business case can be made for dialing back the clock to produce a large, unwieldly Ku-band radar that no police department would buy.
True, importing a few these would create havoc briefly among the detector industry, the same as when K band was introduced in 1976 and Ka band arrived in 1990. A detector company poised to offer immediate countermeasures could be expected to profit from this. But it would be a short-lived advantage. Detecting Ku band is a no-brainer; the industry could easily add Ku band to their entire model lineup within a year.
Some manufacturers including BEL, Escort and Valentine had already produced Ku-band models well before Cobra's January 2006 announcement. Whistler countered Cobra's move by also introducing Ku band-capable models at this CES.
Satisfied that Ku band is a non-issue but curious about the origin of this rumor, I looked into it. Here's what I found:
- Only two models of Ku-band radar have ever been produced in quantity, anywhere in the world.
- Some Ku-band photo radars were produced by French radar manufacturer Sagem in the 1970s and early 1980s, some of which are still used in rural France.
- The other model was also a seventies-vintage photo radar, the TraffiPax Microspeed 09 Type 5. It used a camera made by the German firm, Traffipax, with a radar unit furnished by its Dutch business partner Gatsometer, the inventor of photo radar and whose current K-band photo radar units are the most widely sold.
Traffipax Microspeed Type 5 Ku-band photo radar's power supply and ancillary gear consumes nearly all of the wagon's rear compartment. The bumper-mounted antenna is about 3000 percent larger than the most popular Ka-band moving radar model's. That plus the sheer bulk of the unit accounts for its lack of popularity. |
- A single Microspeed Type 5 Ku-band radar was briefly imported into the United States. Representatives for Traffipax, calling themselves LeMarquis Audio International, in 1987 applied for and were granted an FCC (Federal Communications Commission) radar type acceptance for the old Microspeed radar. In 1990 they participated in a federal government-sponsored photo radar test on the Washington, D.C. Beltway. After the test the unit was returned to Europe.
- This Ku-band photo radar model hasn't been made in over twenty years and while a few remain in service overseas, their number is limited. Well over 99 percent of all photo radar units currently in service operate on X, K or Ka band, nearly all of them on the latter two bands. They're all ultra-low-powered and very difficult or impossible to detect. We've tested only a few radar detectors that do an acceptable job of countering these devices.
- No domestic hand-held or any moving radar unit (able to be used from a rolling police vehicle) has ever used Ku band. These two types comprise nearly 100 percent of all radar in service in the U.S. today. The remainder is made up of photo radar units, most of them operating from inside vans parked at roadside.
The first person to suggest that Ku-band radar may be about to appear in the U.S. was Carl Fors, who does business as Speed Measurement Labs or SML. Aside from being the first to make this claim, Mr. Fors has also been the most vocal in repeating it, mostly on his Web site Speedzones.com.
With Mr. Fors as her source, assistant editor Amy Gilroy wrote in the August 8, 2005 issue of TWICE magazine (This Week In Consumer Electronics) that "...one police radar gun manufacturer is producing a prototype of a new Ku-band radar gun at 13.45 GHz, which could lead to police use of Ku guns as early as September of next year [2006]." (Read the entire story).
Mr. Fors works as a consultant for Cobra Electronics for a reported $3000 per month. According to a previously reliable, authoritative source, he approached Cobra management in 2004 and convinced them that it could be made to appear that Ku band is coming to the U.S. Looking for a competitive edge to bolster sales, Cobra incorporated Ku-band into their new models and hinted that the potential threat is real. Ku band also gives them a twelfth "band" to detect.
Mr. Fors has been the source of similar controversies in recent years. In 2001, on his Speedzones.com Web site he began warning of the arrival of a new radar detector detector called the MR5. He also wrote stories about the MR5 for law enforcement publications.
In his story "Detecting Radar Detectors", appearing in the November 2001 issue of Blue Line, a Canadian law enforcement magazine, Mr. Fors warns that "Terrorists could be using radar detectors to avoid police scrutiny" and "according to research of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and Speed Measurement Labs, Inc. (SML) ...detector drivers travel on average 5-7 mph faster than drivers without the device."
Mr. Fors goes on to write: "Two companies have announced new detector/detectors that received the new lo [local oscillator] frequencies of radar detectors. Stealth Micro Systems of Australia is marketing their Stalcar RDD and Microwave Concepts of Boston has introduced their MR5."
According to State of Massachusetts and Suffolk County public records, the "Microwave Concepts" company name was fictitious.
Mr. Fors also failed to disclose that the MR5 was his own product, the prototype having been made at his direction by an engineer working for a radar detector company. I've known that man for many years.
Perhaps also coincidentally, Mr. Fors at the time was working for a company with a name remarkably similar to Microwave Concepts. This is Applied Concepts, makers of the Stalker brand of radar. And in the only known photo of the MR5, it is affixed to the same pedestal antenna mount supplied with Stalker radar units.
In his Blue Line story Mr. Fors goes on to report that "Almost identical results were gained when using the Stalcar RDD as reported by the O.P.P. [Ontario Provincial Police.] ...The Stalcar RDD and the MR5 performed as advertised detecting and reporting all, old and new, radar detectors even those detectors claiming detection invisibility."
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| MR5 RDD |
Constable Cairns remembers it differently. According to Cairns, the OPP traffic coordinator, Chris Whaley, provided a quantity of different radar detectors and they performed a bench test before leaving the office. It was found that the MR5 was unable to detect several widely-sold, current-model radar detectors even at point-blank range. Cairns also says that when out on the road, the MR5 had extremely low audio volume, which made it difficult to identify vehicles. It also had very poor range.
"Fors was pushing it [the MR5] really hard," Cairns told me. "But it wasn't a very good unit. It looked like an older model BEL detector that'd been re-tuned to detect other radar detectors."
After the OPP expressed no interest in his MR5 and U.S. buyers failed to materialize, Mr. Fors removed all mention of the device from the Speedzones.com Web site. Shortly afterward a new RDD, this from a one-man Austin, Texas skunkworks, appeared on Speedzones.com.
It's unknown if Dallas-based Mr. Fors is acquainted with fellow Texas resident Heinrich Otters, who does business as Hill Country Research. However the HRC model is the only RDD to be displayed prominently and have its virtues described at length on Speedzones.com.
I don't look for Ku band to ever make an appearance in the States. The American police radar industry is going through a major upheaval at present with Kustom Signals, the largest player, recently sold and in tatters. The other three companies are totally focused on diversification and pumping-up profit margins.
Like a lot of rumors, the Ku-band flap seemed a little too coincidental to be real. Now we know why.
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