Reading a book a few years ago on local train history, the guy kept referring to a location I had never heard of where two tracks converged with a station and town. Supposed to be between two towns. Armed with a map and my 1956 plat book, I decided I was going to find it. Took me two trips and going down a number of gravel roads but finally found a road sign. Nothing there except a couple houses and a junk yard/repair shop, so didn’t take long to explore. Yeah the two tracks did converge there, but that’s about all. Famous location with only a sign now. Gas was $2 then so big deal.
Our local county historical society has an annual drive around the county where they have identified obscure points of interest. 70 years and some of them I never heard of. Others I knew from where Dad and I hunted. Exploring your own area can be a great find though.
Years ago, living in Colorado, owner of a recently purchased 4WD truck (yeah, THAT truck … lol …), I read this book, thought it had an interesting setting, old west mining town, and decided to go there for a short holiday. Turned out the old town was totally gone, invisible if you didn’t know it was there, but if you looked carefully the outline of the streets could still be seen. Interesting trip indeed.
Small towns in Nevada don’t have police departments, they rely on the Sheriff’s office and the State Police. It is more likely to find Highway patrol/State Police parked near food and restrooms.
Oh I wish that was true. There are courts in this country that REFUSE to allow radar as evidence if there are more then one vehicle on the road.
I too know a lot about how radar systems work. Hand held radar is still a Dopler radar that running in the K and KA band. The basic principles of the Military radar I worked on and the small hand held devices are the same.
It’s been my experience that bad evidence, no evidence, or whatever; it does not matter. Guilty; pay up.
Hit Kingfisher, OK once 5 under the limit and got written up for 10 over. When I showed up for court to argue the point there were only 2 people in that courtroom; me and the judge. No court reporter, no bailiff, and not even the charging officer was present.
I demanded to face my accuser; the cop.
“Well, he’s gone fishing today” said the judge.
The judge had no idea why I was even there and I had to tell him it was because of alleged speeding.
The judge even told me to my face the cop had no reason to stop me other than “he did not like your looks”. (Long hair/beard) followed up with “As a matter of fact I don’t like your looks or your attitude either”.
I retorted that my attitude was fine until the kangaroo court session started. So 20 minutes of volatile back and forth later he found me guilty anyway; still not knowing what the charge was as he had no copy of the ticket.
The judge also stated that he served 20 years in the Air Force and that I was probably “one of those draft dodging malcontents” who hated the armed forces.
Not for a second. I fully support uniformed personnel and got called up in the draft. The Army decided to bump me out because of a messed up right knee from a traffic accident.
“Well, you look like the type who would have skipped out to Canada” said the judge. He really got offended when I stated that if we were going to resort to stereotypes then should I assume he was a kangaroo outside of the courtroom also.
He was a bit miffed over that. Hate that town; and the cops there have run me through the wringer a lot worse than the cop gone fishing episode.
One time when I was stationed at Millington, there was a Top Sgt (Marine) in the command who was retiring. He was building a house in Missouri so he established residency there by getting a MO drivers license and car registration there.
Every weekend that he did not have duty, he drove to MO to work on the house. He had to go through Ripley, TN. In Ripley, there was a new cop who would sit in the median of Highway 51 and write a ticket to all out of state vehicles. Top racked up 8 tickets before his first court date.
That cop lost his job. The judge was a former Marine. Top didn’t get anymore tickets either.
You could probably have had that ticket reversed on appeal given what you said at the beginning, you have the right to query the officer as part of due process. Certainly the judge knew that. Unfortunately judges sometimes don’t obey the law.
One suggestion re: appearance, looking like a homeless person is probably the more effective ploy. Judges if nothing else are pragmatic & know whatever fine they hand out, the county won’t be receiving any checks from the homeless.
Oh boy. I really admire your gumption but I thank ye for not representing me during my yes your honor and no your honor. I had no desire to turn 6 months into 12 months. I really came to dislike that guy. His son was an even bigger fool in the courtroom when I ended up on the jury.
@MikeInNH, the article you linked to is so full of errors it had me laughing on the floor. Seriously who ever wrote it knows nothing about Radars.
BTW, the part about the house and palm tree moving. I watched that show when it was first on TV. What is missing from your link is that the police used two radars pointed at the same target. It is impossible (but they are getting better) to have two Radars that operate on the exact same frequency. There is always a few Hz difference between them and that is interpreted as a doppler shift.
Edit: Cops will issue a ticket to one vehicle in a group, it will be that last vehicle in the line as they can isolate it by taking a reading after all the others have passed. Virginia State Troopers were well versed in this technique. The difficulty is that often the shot is so far axis that the cosine affect reduces the speed from actual that the driver is shown below the speed limit.
Although we did not bring this up, some of the radars can switch to LIDAR mode and take a picture of the vehicle. LIDAR has a very narrow beam width, unlike the 60 degree beam width of a police RADAR.
Sorry but that actually did happen and still does happen. Radar systems I worked on we would test the radar by bounding it across a valley. Many times we were getting false readings from non moving objects.
Those annoyingly bright home security lights that turn on when somebody approaches the house works on a similar doppler principle, using sound waves though I think. Based on what I see from my neighbors’ version, mostly false readings.
Neighbor down the street has one of those on his garage. Goes off every time I drive by. It is a sure sign that no one is home. I haven’t had the heart to tell him though, that while he’s enjoying the winter in warm weather, everyone knows he’s gone.
My neighbor has several motion activated lights around his house. When the wind blows, the tree branches turn on the lights every few minutes, one set illuminates my back yard. He is home, just a nitwit when it comes to aim and function. Two years ago he replaced those old 150 watt flood lights with LED.
Local TV station did a hand held radar test many years ago. They went out on a sparsely traveled highway with a full sized Buick sedan.
The female reporter pointed the radar gun at the Buick; parked on the shoulder and from 40 feet away. No traffic in sight.
Radar gun showed 0 MPH.
Buick was started and not moving. Radar showed 10 MPH.
Then radar showed 30ish MPH. Buick still sitting there.
Then 50ish MPH. Buick was still inert.
What changed about the Buick? The person behind the wheel was turning the cabin blower motor fan up to higher speeds and apparently that electrical interference was affecting the radar gun.
I am not sure how our doorbell cam works, I have fine tuned the arlo doorbell thing so it will pick up someone walking on the sidewalk and ignore cars on the street. works for me!
Not electrical interference but the movement of the fan blades. It was actually measuring the speed of the fan blades. If the Buick was moving, it would have been the bigger target and the fan blades would not have registered. BTW there was a case of one of the early model dash mounted Radars that had a constant error of 27mph IIRC that was caused by the blower motor in the police car. I don’t recall how they fixed that.
If you are moving a hand held radar around, the crystal inside the remote master oscillator gets slightly compressed in one direction or other which causes it to slightly change frequency which is then seen asa doppler shift. But cops don’t usually move the radar gun, every one I’ve seen holds it rock steady. But that show in Florida with the house was caused by two radars in the same vicinity.
Edit: It could have reading the speed of the air coming out of the vents but 50 mph of air flow from a vent seems way too high for me.