![]() Toggling the Cobra's setting from Highway to City caused the K alerts to stop, but I'd still get the occasional Ka warning. I drove on, and every few miles the box squawked with another K alert. The City setting filters out the majority of false reads.Īfter getting back on the interstate, I spotted a CHP cruiser alongside bushes at the side of the road. To get around this, the Cobra, like most other radar detectors, has a highway/city toggle. It's also the frequency on which many automatic door openers operate, leading to occasional false alarms if you're driving past a 7-11. If the troopers in your state use pulse laser guns to track speed, the iRad 230 can sniff those out, too. The K band is used primarily by municipal police, and since the late 1990s, the Ka band has become a favorite of the highway patrol. Elsewhere, it has been replaced by newer speed detection systems that stick to the K and Ka bands. The oldest of these bands, X, is still in use by cops in Indiana, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Ohio. These signals operate on various frequency bands, which for speed detection are X, K, and Ka. Most speed detectors work by sending out high frequency radio waves, then measuring the time it takes for the reflected waves to return to the device. "Great," I thought, "this thing works, but what the hell does K stand for?" I pulled off the highway to find out, since that's the only intelligent (read: safe) way I can check the radar lingua franca and adjust the Cobra's app settings on the phone. No sooner than ten minutes after hitting the highway, the Cobra sounded a warning, first from a rather friendly sounding female voice announcing "K band detected," followed by some pulsating beeping sound effect. ![]() There are iOS and Android versions of the iRadar app, and it works with almost any device that can pair to the unit via Bluetooth. This was vital, since most of the Cobra's functions are controlled by the free smartphone app. There's a handy pass-through USB port on the power cord so you can keep your phone juiced as well. Be careful where you mount it-though most radar detectors are perfectly legal, you can be dinged for "obstructing vision." A detachable power cord plugs into your 12V cigarette lighter port. The $100 unit, a 5.5-ounce plastic box about the size of a pack of Marlboros, attaches to the windshield with a pair of bra-shaped suction cups. To test iRad, I plotted a circuit north out of San Francisco and through Napa Valley, on roads known to be littered with radar detection equipment and red light cameras. It's like Siri for giving Smokey the slip. ![]() But if you use a detector that pairs with your smartphone like Cobra's iRad 230, you get a host of fringe benefits too: crowdsourced speed trap warnings, live maps with traffic info, and a more refined experience overall. Sure, use one and you'll be better equipped to avoid any number of very expensive moving violation tickets. I've recently learned that mounting a radar detector in your car isn't just about fooling the fuzz.
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