The real issue is, do the passive scramblers meet the product claims to scramble radar and laser? Is the driver truly protected from the police radar and laser guns?
Companies such as RadarTest.com, Speed Measurement Labs, etc., have proven time and again that radar scramblers provide little, if any, jamming to radar guns, and no effect to a laser guns. Magazines, such as Road and Track, Car and Driver, etc., have evaluated passive scramblers and come to the same conclusion.
Why then do people continue to buy scramblers given all the bad press? Passive scrambler companies provide good marketing. Novice buyers want to believe the marketing words!
People Buy Deceptive Descriptions
Claims such as radar and laser protection for “next to nothing” cost induces inexperienced shoppers to make quick decisions:
- Scrambles All Radar Bands
X, K, Ka, SuperWide, Instant-On, Pulse
- Scrambles All Lidar Guns
LTI 20-20, Pro-Laser, Laser-Lyte, Stalker
- 360 Degree Laser/Radar Detection
- Three Year Warranty
- One year Ticket Rebate Program
First Time Buyer Impressed By Marketing
The first time buyer will be impressed by these marketing statements. What would a potential customer think when he/she sees these claims?
It seems logical that the potential buyer may think the product is going to jam radar and laser. However, the marketing bullets do not use the word “jam”, so the buyer is making a leap of faith when reading the word scramble, and concluding with the word “Jam”. Three year warranty is a good feature for any product. One year Ticket Rebate is a “WOW” statement.
One may logically conclude their ticket will be paid for by the company offering the ticket rebate. A more observant person would want to ask, “If the ticket is going to be paid, it presumes I may get a ticket for speeding; but isn’t this jammer supposed to prevent the radar and laser gun from getting my speed? Should the customer ask, “Are there any hidden, unstated, restrictions to the Ticket Rebate on the Passive Scrambler? Who will pay for insurance increases for speeding?
The novice buyer may have recently received a ticket, and they see a product advertisement on a number of WEB sites offering a near perfect scenario: protection from radar and laser, 360 degree protection, 3 year warranty, ticket rebate. How can you pass that up for $300 or less? There is a saying that goes, “If it sounds too good to be true, it is.”
If you are a novice buyer, may I suggest that you study the passive radar scrambler feedback before laying your money down? It’s just a suggestion. Before throwing your money at the strong marketing words, find out if the radar/laser jamming claims have been certified by an industry recognized test company such as Speed Measurement Labs or RadarTest.com.
Major Test Sources Say THEY DON"T WORK!
Major test sources such as Road and Track, Car and Driver, Speed Measurement Labs, have tested passive scramblers since 1994, and have yet to find a scrambler product that meets its claims to jam radar and laser.
Perhaps the reason is as follows. A radar signal that strikes your vehicle reflects a Doppler radar signal that is equal to the reflected surface area of the vehicle, typically 1000 square inches for a passenger vehicle; an SUV is typically about 1500 square inches; and a 4x4 truck would be about 2000 square inches.
The vast majority of passive scramblers sold today provide a one or two square inch reflected noise signal. If you are reflecting 1500 square inches of radar off your vehicle, and the scrambler is reflecting 2 square inches of radar noise, which one of those signals will be detected by the radar gun? The large signal of course. The Doppler signal from your car is 750 times larger than the noise signal, thus the radar gun is going to detect your speed and not be affected by the tiny noise pulse.
In order for a passive scrambler to effectively scramble the 1,500 square inches of Doppler radar, you need a reflecting antenna on the car equal to the radar reflection of the car. That would be a 2 foot tall by 5 foot wide horn antenna on top of your vehicle.
Do you remember the movie “The Blues Brothers”? Jake and Elwood Blues drove around with a gigantic horn speaker on top of their car. That is what your vehicle would look like driving down the road.
The features on many passive scramblers also indicate invisibility to “VG3”. There is no VG3 radar detector detector. There is VG2, Spectre II and Spectre III, which are used by police to locate drivers with radar detectors.
Where do passive scrambler companies come up with this stuff?
The barn was effectively an audio reflecting antenna. It received an audio signal (your voice) and reflected the audio signal back to your ears (the audio receiver.)
When radar is triggered from a radar gun, it travels down the highway as an invisible wave and is referred to as the RF signal. As the signal travels down the highway, it grows in height and width and gets progressively weaker in strength as it moves away from the radar gun. By the time an RF signal strikes the front of your car at 1000 feet, it is 1 million times weaker than when it was first triggered.
The average car offers about 1000 square inches of reflective surface area. A passive scrambler typically has 2 square inches of reflective antenna.
When the RF signal strikes the car/truck, it also strikes the passive scrambler and the reflection is now called the Doppler Signal, since it changes frequency somewhat as a result of the reflection. The net result is 1000 inches of RF Doppler Signal reflection combined with 2 square inches of Scrambler chirp noise.
Even to a person who dislikes math, one can devide (1000/2) and come up with a 500:1 ratio of vehicle Doppler strength over the passive scrambler strength.
Since the passive scrambler is not designed to transmit, it can not come close to enough power to defeat the larger vehicle Doppler signal
A potential buyer of Passive Radar Scramblers should question the claims offered by Rocky Mountain Radar, the largest manufacturer of passive scramblers. When a claim is made about jamming to within 100 feet, (the "punch-through" distance where the radar gun overpowers the FM Chirp Signal of a Passive Scrambler), Rocky Mountain Radar should be able to prove it with written test reports and/or videos from Speed Measurement Labs (SML), the recognized authority in this field.
However, Speed Measurement Labs has shown a multitude of times that Passive Radar Scramblers are ineffective from two miles, 1 mile, 1/2 mile, all the way to the radar gun; so, how is it possible that a Passive Scrambler can provide the advertised 100 foot "punch-through" protection? They can't! But the words sound so good, that people simply believe the words, and forget to ask for actual test proof. RMR can't provide performance test results from neither SML or Speedtest proving their products work.
