At 9:42 PM -0600 1/16/00, Dvorak, Donovan (JUS) wrote:
A couple of years back I had the opportunity to use a laser for an hour or
so under the supervision of a cop.
traitor! ;)
plates so obviously they are not required. Bending them down or using an
anti-reflective cover will give you nothing but false hope.
I agree. However, I remember reading an article in one of the car
mags just after lasers hit the street. They found a dark color,
aerodynamic car, with pop-up headlights lowered and no front liscense
plate was very difficult to detect (the car in question was a Probe).
However, they also noted that all it takes is one good reflective
surface, be it an exposed head light, license plate, upright
windshield, grill, bright paint. . . to provide a good return.
Suffice it to say, no A2 will ever be stealthy! Sorry I can't provide
a reference, but it makes intuitive sense to me.
Correct me if
I'm wrong, but I don't think you can "jam" a laser beam.
As I said before, I think it would be _extremely_ difficult,
but I bet military technology could do it for a few million bucks! I
have a 150mW 850nm laser in lab which would certeinly saturate the
detector and receiver circuit of the laser gun, rendering it
temporarily useless. The tricky part would be to aim it right at the
gun the entire time. If you spread out a beam over a large area you
would need an _enormously_ powerful laser, or other IR source.
As to detection,
lasers are instant-on and have a very narrow beam directed at another
vehicle so detection is unlikely. Sure you'll detect when they've got the
beam pointed at your vehicle but by then its too late.
Agreed.
I say rather than
spending your money on snakeoil, save your money for an upgrade for your VW.
Since most decent radar detectors (which are very effective,
though not fool-proof) have a laser detector as well, it's not a bad
idea, I wouldn't spend any money on just a laser detector alone, or
put any effort toward laser 'stealth', or get over confident. But I
think it can be a usefool tool.
Lee
W. Lee Hendrick
[email protected]
http://soliton.ucsd.edu/~hendrick/
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