Tom L

It seems I will continue to have K Band issues. Would it work to put tape or tin foil or ? over the rear facing antenna/horn. It sounds like this would make the Valentine no worse than an Escort and would be better than turning off K band altogether. Thanks, Tom

MP4.2+6.0

If they don't use K much, not a big risk in turn to turn off. But you need local info. Search the web for your area for starters; a site or two indexes this IIRC too. When I turned off bands, first I drove a good month to watch in my area what frequencies the detectors reported, and asked family members to do the same.

Of course if you are in CA, a lot of this is academic anyway; CHP now uses Laser (LIDAR) heavily and ALL detectors are basically useless other than to tell you you got hit and to get your license, registration and story ready. Thus if you are in a heavy laser state, reduce speed, develop great forward (and rear onramp) visual scanning, go back to older techniques of letting some other speeder (sucker) "blaze the trail" and then leisurely tail, and/or think about other cloaking options. Cities and the occasional sheriff (rural areas) here still use radar, but most of them are too broke to run much real traffic patrol anyway.

Atari XL

Tape won't affect radar signals, but metal will. I was going to suggest a tin foil cover for the rear horn as an option. It will be interesting to see if it eliminates the falses, and might be an ok compromise if K band is used in your area. Interested to see how it turns out.

Great recommendations from MP4.2+6.0! I almost disabled K band in my area, but after a long period of testing, I realized a small handful of sheriffs use K. I suspect they do it on purpose, because that's what I would do.

Tom L

I typically travel between Montana and Northern Utah. I drive for an hour or so and then pass by a town, and then another hour of relatively open roads, etc. The Idaho State Police are out quite often, even in the middle of no-where. I will do the research as you suggested.

One problem is that even though I have used a Valentine for over 12 years. It just always worked - even as I shared it with my A4's, pickup, and motorcycle. Having Side Assist issues and having to learn how it works, is new to me.

MP4.2+6.0

If your unit is old like that. I did that with my 2000 era one some years ago. Here is a link to it to check it out: https://store.valentine1.com/upgrades/

Tom L

No - I just bought another one. Brand new, specifically so it would be programmable. I just didn’t fully understand the issues with Side Assist. After talking with Valentine twice, pre-purchase, I thought I could turn on the Traffic Monitor filter and be good to go.

Atari XL

Bel / Escort users have been able to avoid Side Assist falses by enabling TSR (Traffic Sensor Rejection) and disabling POP. Valentine calls it the "Traffic Monitor Filter", so I would check those two settings first. I also noticed a comment about a V1 setting (G) that will mute rear K band alerts, in stead of killing K completely.

Tom L

The K band mute option is programmable. However, this just shuts off the beep. I find with the arrows flashing between rear and side that it is fairly distracting and makes it difficult to determine a real alert. Because so much of my driving is in rural areas, for now, I can just turn off and on the Valentine. This clears the K band fault until I pass another town or other K band signal. Of course, I am hoping to find a more suitable and permanent fix