The Valentine 1 is nice because not only does it detect all types of police radar and laser, and can keep track of multiple signals at once, and the directional arrows tell you which direction the radar is coming from.
This is handy, for example, when you’re going up 395 and some asshat blows past you doing 100 in an Escalade. At this speed it’s pretty hard to get zapped from behind if you’re reasonably diligent about watching the rear view mirror. And it’s very easy to get zapped from the front – pop over a hill, and if there’s a cop there, you’re toast.
So I use what Car and Driver calls “the patsy method” where you are detecting the radar that’s being aimed at other cars, not you. In this case, once the asshat blows past you (and one always does), you let him be your patsy and follow at a distance of about 1/2 mile to a mile, matching his speed and checking the rear view mirror frequently. When the detector goes off, see what direction it’s coming from. Almost always the radar is front of you – in front of your patsy as well – and almost always the patsy will not have a radar detector himself.
I’ll drop down out of warp speed and watch the patsy get nailed. I would say in the past 3 or 4 years of going up to Mammoth, I’ve seen at least 10 people get nailed, and the cop never even sees me. I’m doing 65 by the time I come into his view. It makes for an efficient and entertaining drive.
The other nice thing about the V1 is that it has a remote control option which allows you to hide both the display and the detector itself.
