You'd been meaning to buy a detector, but with all the talk about X-band, K-band, instant-on, and now LASERS for God's sake, you just never made a decision and now it's too late and you gotta FEED THE BEARS!

Well, in our never-ending battle for truth, justice and nirvana on the road, we're here to help you through the maze. But be forewarned - there are no guarantees. And there is no substitute for common sense. So herewith is a quick tour through the microwave jungle.

X-band and K-band - our old friends that have been around forever. All detectors pick these up, some better than others. Better than 99% of all police radar units use one or the other of these frequencies. Unfortunately, these same frequencies are used by microwave ovens, burglar alarms, grocery store door openers and microwave communications towers, so your detector will probably get a lot of these, too. Once you get used to them on your daily routes, you will be able to tell the difference.

Ka-band - a very wide band of the microwave spectrum. A narrow portion of it is used by Photo Radar (see below). Very few detectors will pick this up. There is a brand of radar unit on the market called the Stalker that uses other frequencies within the Ka band but there are very few of these units currently in use.

Moving-mode vs. Stationary - refers to the police car. Stationary-mode radar can only be used from a motionless police car, like at a trap. With moving-mode radar, the police car can be moving. The radar takes a reading off the ground to figure the speed of the police car, then takes a reading off the target and adds it to the ground reference to calculate the target's actual speed. The Staters use this a lot to come up from behind you. If you get a weak signal that slowly gets stronger, check your mirrors. Look way back. You should be doing this anyway - not all cops use radar.

Instant-On - also known as triggered radar. This is the gun-type where the officer points it at your car, pulls the trigger and ZAP - he's got your speed. The police claim there is no defense. Don't believe it. In the real world, you will start getting a signal on your detector as the guy at the speed trap zaps the drivers ahead of you. First you will get a weak signal for a couple of seconds, then it goes away. Then you will get a stronger signal for a couple of seconds, which also goes away. Time to back it down and start looking for likely trap locations.

I think instant-on is stationary-mode only, but I won't swear to it. I've never seen it used from a moving vehicle.

This type is used from both cars and motorcycles. I have noticed that these units leak a heck of a lot of microwave radiation even when they are not being triggered. My Escort routinely picks up State Patrol motorcycle cops cruising down the road with the gun in the holster! These guys will eventually be sorry. Long-term exposure to microwave radiation is known to cause cancer, and I sure as hell wouldn't want one of those guns sitting near my crotch 8 hours a day!

Photo Radar - this one has gotten lots of publicity, but so far it is highly overrated. An unmanned unit sits by the side of the road. When a car comes by that is over the preset speed, the unit takes a picture of the front of the car showing the license plate with the speed, date and time superimposed, and the police mail a ticket to the registered owner. It uses a narrow segment of the total Ka-band. Several detectors now pick up Ka-band.

Heard a cute story about photo radar. Seems someone got caught in San Francisco by photo radar. The cops mailed him the picture of his car and a ticket for $40. He mailed them back a photo of a pair of twenties! They responded with a photo of a pair of handcuffs! He paid the ticket. Who says they don't have a sense of humor.

There is bad news and good news with photo radar. The bad news is that it can crank out 1200 tickets per hour! Multiply that by the cost of one ticket, calculate in the fact that they don't have to pay an officer to sit there, and this thing looks very attractive to the revenue-enhancement people. If you don't believe they think that way, consider the fact that the company that manufactures the unit gets a set fee for every ticket issued! It's also bad in that they can hide it in just about any kind of vehicle, or maybe not in a vehicle at all.

The good news is that it raises some sticky legal issues in this state. Washington law requires an officer to actually stop the offending driver and issue the citation in person. There is also a Constitutional question about charging a person with a crime when there isn't any evidence. After all, they don't try to identify the driver, they just charge the registered owner. But laws can be changed.

The real good news is that, when the King County government tested it a couple of years ago, they found that rain obscured the image badly enough that they couldn't read the license plates! So far it is only being used in a few places in the country, notably Pasadena, California and Paradise Valley, Colorado. It has been tried and rejected in a bunch of other places.

Lasers - called lidar in this application. This is the latest stealth technology and, boy, are the cops excited! As the name implies, it uses a laser instead of microwaves and the beam is much tighter, reducing the risk (or opportunity) of getting a reading off an unintended target. But all is not honey for the bears. Car and Driver magazine managed to get their hands on one of these units and printed a test of it in the April issue. First, it is stationary-mode only. Second, the unit is quite heavy (4.4 pounds) and has to be hand-aimed, which reduces the effectiveness. Car and Driver found that the difficulty of keeping it aimed at a single vehicle could increase the time required to lock in a reading to 3 or 4 seconds. Third, it costs about three times what a radar unit does. Fourth, it hasn't established a legal background yet, so it may not be admissible as evidence in court. And finally, Cincinnati Microwave already has a laser detector on the market for $99!

So where does that leave the poor gear-head who wants to enjoy a good stretch of road or maybe just get to work on time? Well, if you wanna play, you gotta pay. When the magazines do a test of detectors, read it and make a choice. But remember, a detector is just a pair of binoculars for microwaves. You still need to pay attention. Do both, show a little discretion in when and where you hammer it, and you may achieve a peaceful (if uneasy) coexistence with our furry friends. Let somebody else feed the bears.