Laser gun use is rapidly increasing. Honolulu has no radar guns, only LTI lasers. Albuquerque is going to all lasers away from radar guns as laser’s infrared, 904 nanometer light beam can pinpoint one vehicle is dense rush hour traffic. Fort Worth, TX just bought forty Stalker laser guns for traffic and motor officers and the California Highway Patrol recently took delivery of over 200 LTI Ultralyte LR laser guns. New laser guns now have digital cameras attached for evidence of speeding. Laser’s beam divergence at 500 feet is only 18 inches compared to a Ka band radar gun’s 79 feet. Lasers are now lighter and easier to use and some can fit in your pocket. Before we tested laser this year, SML’s staff engineer Dave Adams tested each laser in the portable laboratory to insure accuracy of the lasers to specifications of DOT HS 809 811 checking pulse rates to +/- .1% no greater than 390 Hz and vertical and horizontal functional beamwidth no greater than 5 milliradians. Dave Adams put in some thirty-three years at White Sands Missile Testing Range as a radar and laser engineer. This year we choose both a Kustom Pro Laser III and a Stalker LZ-1 laser guns to use. Stalker has made their beam pattern vertical to give faster target acquisition while Kustom’s beam is square. If detectors were to see laser at all at 1000 feet, it was predicted they would see Stalker’s vertical beam divergence easier than Kustom’s square pattern. The inherent problem with all detectors is giving advanced warning to laser’s use. Detectors give ample advanced warning to radar’s bouncing microwave, but little or no advanced warning to laser’s narrow, infrared light. There is no “scatter” with laser compared to microwave radar. In past testing, we proved this with laser aimed at a lead vehicle while the trailing vehicle’s detector remained silent. No advanced warning! However, if your detector does alert you to laser it usually means you just got a ticket. All test vehicle were at the 1000 foot cone and each laser was aimed directly at the detector on the windshield then aimed three times at the front bumper. We then repeated the test at 500 feet where laser’s beam narrows to 18”. Observers reported if the detectors alerted to laser. W means aimed at wind shield. Y means yes detector alerted to laser. N means No detector did not alert. Tiger Lily and Cheetah contained Beltronics STi detectors with similar performance.

	1000 feet		500 feet		% Alerts
Detector	Kustom Pro Laser III	Stalker LZ-1	Kustom Pro Laser III	Stalker LZ-1
Escort 9500	i WY, N, N, Y	WY, Y, Y, Y	WY, N, N, N	WY, Y, Y, Y	58%
Cobra XRSR7	WY, N, N, N	WY, N, Y, Y	WY, N, N, N	WY, N, N, Y	25%
Valentine 1	WY, Y, Y, Y	WY, Y, Y, Y	WY, Y, Y, Y	WY, Y, Y, Y	100%
Whistler Pro 78	WY, N, N, N	WY, Y, Y, Y	WY, N, N, N	WY, N, N, N	25%
Whistler XTR 690	WY, Y, N, N	WY, Y, Y, N	WY, N, N, N	WY, N, N, N	25%
Beltronics STi	WY, Y, N, N	WY, N, Y, Y	WY, N, N, N	WY, Y, Y, Y	50%
Q3 Radar Hawk SB3	WY, N, N, N	WY, Y, N, Y	WY, N, N, N	WY, N, N, N	17%
Q3 Radar Hawk SE	WY, N, N, N	WY, Y, Y, Y	WY, N, N, N	WY, Y, N, Y	42%
Q3 Radar Hawk SM	WY, N, N, N	WY, N, N, N	WY, N, N, N	WY, N, N, N	0%

The results clearly show the detectors were more likely to see the vertical beam of Stalker’s laser at 1000 feet. The detectors saw Stalker’s gun at 1000 feet 70% of the time compared to alerting to the Kustom Pro Laser III only 22%. At 500 feet the detectors saw the Kustom gun only 11% with only Valentine 1 reporting Kustom’s laser. Detectors saw Stalker’s gun 44% of the exposures at 500 feet. The Valentine 1 saw all laser transmission from both guns. Expect in the near future for SML to field test laser counter measures and add them to this report.