Hunted: West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennslvania

Once I settled down at a Deep Creek lodge Wednesday evening, I decided to create this blog, and created the first Speedtrap Hunter Blog post.

First light Thursday morning, May 29th, and being refreshed from a good night's rest, I decided to put my two new stealth radar detectors—the Beltronics StiR and the Escort Passport 9500ci to their ultimate test...against...you guessed it, Virginia state troopers (at least, in theory).

But, before I got back on the interstate, I had to stop because of [an] Accident.

No, it's not what you are thinking, I didn't have an accident, I had to stop at [an] Accident...Accident, Maryland...by mistake, I might add.

After catching a quick bite, I returned to my Easterly route on Interstate 68 towards Hagerstown, Maryland to pick up South Interstate 81 which would take me back through a piece of West Virginia and ultimately through the long side (western) of Virginia (about 320 miles in total! just in Virginia) but through some very, very enticing roads!

What speed would you be inclined to drive on this stretch of road?

After the intense experience in Ohio, the roads seemed extremely quiet in comparison and not much action was seen in Virginia. For this portion of the trip, I had to power-off and remove my Valentine One from operation.



Both the Escort Passport 9500ci and Beltronics STiR behaved well and it was a real pleasure to drive without concern to any nasties—in the form of the Spectre III or Spectre IV+ radar detector detectors—as both high-end remote radar detectors use the same dual-LNA (low-noise-amplifier) platform that debuted in the venerable and undetectable Beltronics STi Driver windshield-mount radar detector.

Having successfully charted I81 and I77 south, I proceeded into North Carolina—on my way to South Carolina—where I was happy to re-engage the service of my Valentine One (v3.861).

Call me "crazy" or "over the top," but I believe, I get a lot of utility of running all three radar detectors together (the two stealth remotes, and a high-end windshield-mount like the V1) because I get the best of all worlds: the potential to have all three pieces of information displayed at the same time—the number of bogeys by band (provided by the Escort Passport 9500ci), the frequency of the "strongest" band (provided by the Beltronics STi-R), and of course, the likely direction from which the police radar source(s) is coming).

Another important reason, while I still choose to drive with my Valentine One(s) is they continue to serve as my reference radar detector(s): the purity of the alerting to both police radar and police laser remains unmatched and remains the platinum standard. Using the instant-on/instant-off nature of the both radar and laser detection provided by the V1, allows me to accurately gauge the nature and severity of the threat as well as the actual performance of the other countermeasures that I use, in combination.

And yet., with all this equipment in operation, and the knowledge to use them appropriately, it never fails me that I almost, I am mean almost got nailed on I77 south coming into Statesville, NC just above exit 50. The speed limit drops precipitously down to 55mph and three things always seem to happen when I come through this section of highway. 1) I forget that this stretch is heavily enforced, 2) I tend to miss the speed zone transitions, and 3) I almost get nailed as a result, everytime!

It was no different this time around, but I had a couple of things working to my favor, most importantly I had remained in the right lane and there were a lot of surrounding vehicles on the highway at the time. I got an instant-on blast (at very close range) of Ka (of the 34.7 variety, I believe) and my goose was probably cooked, however, the officer still had to make a visual identification of the "offending" vehicle. Fortunately for me, I managed to bring things down quickly (and quietly) while staying in my lane, like a good little boy.

Just to be on the safe side, I decided to stop at JR's and get a carton of smokes., immediately getting off the interstate at exit 50.

I let things cool down a bit and by the time (10 minutes later) I re-entered the Interstate, the dark stealth SUV that was running radar on the right shoulder already had a "customer."

I damn sure need to program this stretch of highway into my 9500ci as SPEEDTRP, for the next time I forget to remember.

Whatever you do, if you ever happen to travel I-77 around Statesville, North Carolina, watch-out around exit 50 and keep in mind that some sections of this interstate carry an additional $250 speeding penalty!

Other than that, things remained pretty quiet on I-77 South until I got to the border of South Carolina—where my Passport 9500ci, Beltronics STiR, and Valentine One all alerted to an officer running instant-on Ka towards the northbound lanes as motorists first entered North Carolina and the Charlotte city limits.

One thing worth nothing: I have been driving with the Cheetah GPSMirror for quite some time, in preparation for an extensive real-world review of this GPS detector (redlight and speed camera detector), and I noticed a subtle, but very nice "feature" of this GPS Mirror: the wide-angle view provided by this rear-view mirror has some real advantages, I believe, in the realworld on the highway: the ability to allow me to quickly scan to the rear, the on-ramps and overpasses behind me for any speedtraps from behind, without requiring me to actually turn-around (and take my eyes of the road in the process).

It's got nothing to do with the performance of the unit in its ability to accurately alert to red light and speedcamera/fixed-camera locations across the North America, but I feel, it's an important aspect of the potential safety enhancements provided by the Cheetah GPS Mirror.

I managed to arrive without incident to meet up with my friends Danny and Frank at Buy Radar Detectors, located in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Both of these good-ol'-boys are some of my favorite radar detector dealers.

During my stay, I showed them the progress we made, first hand, with Veil G4 and made some videos that will soon be appearing on the Net that I hope you'll find both entertaining and informative.

I ended up crashing at one of my cousin's house outside of Charlotte, North Carolina before turning around to head back home, to Pennsylvania, by basically the reverse route, I-77 North to I-81 North to I-76 East towards Philadelphia.

Along I-77 in Virginia, I met up with another driving enthusiast and we ran hard together for a good while, swapped leads from time to time until we had a near-miss.

Sometimes when you move at the rates that we sometimes do, you inevitably are going to climb up behind and sometimes (if you are not paying sharp attention) walk-on-by the wrong vehicle, as my friend did:

Don't pass a unmarked state trooper, even if it means going 35mph in a 65mph zone!

Fortunately, he managed to receive a harsh reprimand, while driving, from the officer riding shotgun along-side. When I pulled-up along side my lucky comrade, we shared a great laugh at our gaffe.

At that point, it was time to part our separate ways— he continued on I-77, while I veered off to I-81 to make my long northerly trek through western Virginia, back through West Virginia, Maryland, and ultimately to the Keystone State.

Later on I81, while I was running pretty hard, I noticed brake lights (for no apparent reason) well up ahead, which only meant one thing. Even though the radar detectors remained silent, I knew there was a trooper sitting up ahead waiting to ambush me.

Note: Always remember that a radar detector is not a trooper detector...it's only a valuable support tool—the most important "detector" still lies between your ears.

I made sure my speed was in check as I approached the area where the vehicles ahead had been braking and lo and behold, he was there! While I passed him, my radar detectors stayed siltent—meaning he was being very selective in pulling his trigger.

Note: At the time, this thought also occurred to me that troopers who run Spectre RDDs in VA can afford to sit back and be very judicious with their radar gun, to maximize their chances of detecting (hearing) an approaching driver operating a conventional (detectable) radar detector. They could use the alerting of the Spectre RDD to determining the precise moment when to pull the trigger to not only nab a speeder, but a radar detector user as well. Simply hiding your conventional operating radar detector in Virginia (or other areas where their usage is deemed "inappropriate") is not enough as the Spectre RDD will easily sniff them out.

Fortunately for us, Beltronics and Escort have completely mitigated this threat with their Beltronics STi Driver, Beltronics STi-R, and Escort Passport 9500ci radar detectors.

Note: Don't let the name fool you—the Escort Passport 9500i is not the windshield-mount version of the Escort Passport 9500ci as the Escort Passport 9500i uses a "conventional" radar detector receiver (in so far as its not completely immune to radar detector detectors).

Knowing that this is a routine occurrence at many of the emergency-vehicle-only-turn-arounds which adorn the center median, I managed to snap this video at a later time.

These types of instant-on ambushes are routine on interstates and highways that have similar large wooded, hilly, or grassy medians.

I finally manged to crawl in around 0100 on Saturday, 31 May after accumulating a little more than 4200 miles since the start of Memorial Day Weekend little more than seven days earlier—safe and ticket free.

Managed to get a glimpse of my wife along with a good day's rest only to prepare to head off to New England and upstate Vermont (along the Canadian border), the following Monday for another 10 day business/road trip...

Bob, the Speed Trap Hunter