Passport8500 and H.A.R.D. System Report
The Passport8500 and HARD system came in on Monday, and after a few days of use I'm now ready to give some initial impressions.
First, the straight wire kit that Escort provides with the unit makes install a breeze, especially if you're like me and already have a wire run from your battery for other accessories, like a pair of Fiam horns. I tapped into the power wire, snaked the cord through the stuff behind the headlights, then out through the small gap between the front fairing and the windscreen. I tied the extra cord up, secured my wiring run, and that was that.
The transmitter for the HARD system is pretty small, and the manufacturer provides enough velcro to mount both the transmitter and receiver. I used half of the velcro stuff to mount the transmitter on the bottom of the radar detector so it would be out of the way and have minimal impact on the appearance of the unit.
I used the supplied suction cup bracket to secure the radar detector to the windscreen just above the dash such that the unit sags a bit and uses it's bottom edge and the transmitter to help steady it when the going gets bumpy. I'd rather the unit didn't have any sag, but the angle of the wind screen is such that I can't get rid of the sag without pointing the unit at the ground two feet in front of the bike. I had my doubts as to how this was going to work, but when I actually got on the road it worked pretty darn well.
The receiver and LED I mounted on the inside of my helmet. I used the rest of the velcro to mount the receiver on the inside front edge of the helmet. The position I chose is near my mouth, to the right of center against the cheek pad. I ran the lead for the LED under the right cheek pad and positioned the LED such that it rest about an inch from my face and just at the ede of my peripheral vision. Looking straight ahead from inside the helmet, I am just barely aware of the LED until a signal from the transmitter switches it on. This set up works great during the day, but at night I have found the LED is too bright, and move it completely out of my vision range. The LED washes the whole inside of the helmet with red light when it kicks on at night, so even though I cannot see the LED itself when it switches on, it's still more than obvious when it has been activated.
The big question, though, is how good a job it does of saving your butt from a speeding ticket. Well, after only a few days it's probably too soon to draw definitive conclusions, but so far the count is two times when the setup warned me with enough time to save me, and three times when it did not. I was traveling at legal speeds when all five of these confirmed encounters with the five-oh occured, so no failures to warn cost me a speeding ticket. But it does seem to prove a very valueable point: a radar detector is not a magic speeding ticket deflector shield. If the cop knows what he's doing, he's going to get your *** whether you have a detection system or not. Yeah, we all say we know that, but when you actually have the detector in front of you and it starts going crazy for no apparent reason while you're just riding along minding your own business, the point gets driven home real fast. Another interesting point is that so far every confirmed cop the detector sniffed out saw fit to clock me. Every single one. Even when there were cars just up the road moving faster than me, they apparently waited for me to come into range and then lit me up. Sobering.
In addition to the five encounters I had with known cops, there were a number of times when the detector alerted me to K and Ka signals but I could not find the source. Since I cannot confirm whether the detector would have saved me or only told me that I was busted, I can only offer them as a side note. Again, I was traveling at legal speeds every time so any failures to detect cost me nothing, but that point about the detector not being a speeding ticket deflector shield raises it's ugly head again.
So that's it for now, ladies and germs. I'll issue another report after a couple of weeks and let you know how the setup holds up and give an updated count of cop encounters. Stay upright, all.