Without its remote the K40 Calibre is helpless. Unlike most consumer electronics with remote controls, televisions for example, there are no backup controls. I later found it under the passenger seat. The first time I went to change the audio volume, it had already disappeared. I couldn't find a suitable, perfectly-flat mounting spot and left it in a cubby hole at the top of the center stack.
ALP NET RADAR SPECTRE MANUAL
Power, manual mute, audio volume and three operating modes, city, highway and mute, are controlled by a small wireless transmitter that measures about one-inch-square.Īccording to the installation instructions, the remote can be mounted using the supplied double-sided tape or left loose. There's no control/display unit (one's available as a no-cost option).
ALP NET RADAR SPECTRE BLUETOOTH
The radar antenna looks the same, but now has an extra module on one end to accommodate its Bluetooth gadgetry. The K40 Calibre's major components look pretty much like those of the K40 2000P model. But no matter, forget about advertising hyperbole and let's look at the product. The Spectre RDD can sniff out the K40 Calibre at a considerable distance. But that was obsolete by the mid-nineties and it has rapidly been supplanted by the vastly superior Spectre (aka Stalcar) RDD detector detector. True, it's immune to the 1990-vintage Technisonics Interceptor The words "stealthy" and "stealth" also appear prominently in promotional material and on the company website. K40 calls the Calibre an "undetectable" radar detector. In all, a remarkable performance from what may be the best custom-installed radar detector.
On daily commutes it rarely goes off and is nearly as quiet on highway trips. The Escort laser jammer system worked equally well, jamming some of the guns down to point-blank range and doing almost as well against the rest. At the Hill/Curve Test Site it was Escort Passport 9500ci: 1,655 feet, K40 Calibre (rear antenna): 867 feet. The K40 Calibre, using its rear antenna, spotted it at 5,160 feet. Yet the Escort Passport 9500ci outperformed it at both test sites using its forward-facing antenna-while driving away from the radar guns.įor example, at the Straightaway Test Site the Escort Passport 9500ci detected the 34.7 (GHz) Ka-band radar coming from behind at 7,240 feet. K40 trades heavily on the notion that a rear antenna is necessary to spot radar coming from behind. That included time spent fabricating and painting two mounting brackets for the front jammers, as the factory jobs were less than ideal for the miniscule mounting area offered by our mail box-sized Honda. Installing the Escort Passport 9500ci took eight hours. The K40 Caliber offers the same option although its LED is a single color. For a low-profile installation a bi-color LED can be mounted in the instrument cluster, replacing the display. Fortunately, the system powers-up when the car is started and shuts off automatically as well.Ī small LED display shows operating mode and other vital information. The power switch is tough to find and tougher to operate. It's backlit, making the important buttons easy to find and use at night. The Escort Passport 9500ci is a departure from previous Escort remote systems since it uses GPS technology to limit false alarms.Īll operations are handled by a thumb-sized surface-mounted control unit. Over a month-long period I field-tested both for performance and also logged 2,000 miles with each in a combination of city and highway driving. The arrival of the Escort Passport 9500ci allowed an opportunity to see if K40's bold claims for the K40 Calibre and the K40 Defuser EX would hold water. K40 offers the Calibre model with Defuser EX laser jammers that can also be linked to other K40 remote models. The 9500 ci comes with the test-winning Escort Laser ShifterPro laser-jamming system. Its current line-topping custom-installed remote is the Escort Passport 9500ci. K40 had this rarefied segment to itself until Escort joined the fray. That's the same number available at the time of my 2005 remote-model test and hardly an overabundance. If you're looking for a custom-installed remote radar detector system-complete with laser jammers-the number of contenders is pretty small: four. Escort Passport 9500ci installed on BMW 335i.
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