Tier1Terrier

I'm the new owner of an R7. Please let's not make this about which radar detector is better or "you should have gotten laser jammer" type discussion. I know there are plenty of R7 owners that may have input or benefit from this if they are new to ownership.

Yesterday, I took my 991.2 out for it's first spin around town with the R7. I live in a suburban town/city in South FL. In my short drive, I was surprised to see the number of false alerts I was getting around town. I know all radar detectors experience these and that the R7 is particularly sensitive due to it's known long range sensitivity. Most of the falses I experienced were as I was approaching intersections and I'm certain it had something to do with other vehicles BSM or ACC systems which I already know are known to trigger false alarms. A couple of falses when approaching retail establishments with remote entry door sensors.

I watched the 30 minute Vortex Radar 'How to' for the R7 and have read through the manual. To be honest, for a beginner owner, the plethora of settings is overwhelming. I know there are plenty of 'cheaper' setups that will give me a simple city/highway switch and be done. The R7 (as other models in this range) are clearly much more sophisticated. I intend to learn and understand the unit over time but I just need a leg up to get me past the immediately obvious issues.

I'm hoping that like-minded people here will be able to offer some suggested settings that they have found optimal for city/suburban use. That way, I can just switch between city and highway and more or less and add gps locations for known falses and adjust frequency ranges as I become more familiar.

Here are a list of the latest setting options in Basic and Advance mode. To make things simple, feel free to copy and past the list below with your settings beside them which will be particularly helpful if you live in a similar geographical area (suburban town near big city).Basic: Simplified menu option list, shows only the following settings:

• Highway / Advanced / City
• X / K / Ka percentages (in Advanced)
• Speed Camera On/Off
• Redlight Camera On/Off
• RLC Quiet Ride Speed
• Voice On/Off
• Ka Frequency Voice On/Off
• X Band On/Off
• K Band On/Off
• Ka Band On/Off
• Laser On/Off
• MRCD On/Off
• Display Mode
• Scan Icon On/Off
• Display Mode
• Alert Display Mode
• Speed Unit
• Auto Mute On/Off
• Auto Mute Volume
• Quiet Ride
• Quiet Ride Beep Volume
• Limit Speed
• Factory Reset
• Delete All Mute
• Delete All User
• SW Version
• DB Version

Expert: (Default) Gives you access to every single menu option available. It adds the following options to the Basic menu:

• Rear Balance
• GPS On/Off
• K POP On/Off
• Ka POP On/Off
• K Filter On/Off
• Ka Filter On/Off
• TSF On/Off
• K Block On/Off
• K Narrow / Wide / Extended
• Ka Narrow / Wide / Segmentation
• MRCD / Ka / Signal Priority
• Mute Memory X/K / Ka/MRCD
• All Threat On/Off
• Display Color
• Arrow Color
• Band Color
• X Band Tone
• K Band Tone
• MRCD Tone
• Ka Band Tone
• Bogey Tone
• Laser Tone
• Rear K Mute
• Dark Mode
• Auto Dim
• MRCD Quiet Ride On/Off
• Time Zone
• DST
• Battery Warning
• Battery Saver
• Self Test
• Memory Quota

Note: The MRCD options only show up when MRCD is enabled.

Al.Fresco

For your normal around town routes, make sure you mute memory the businesses with the remote doors setting your system off. That way next time by those, it will not audibly alert on those.

Jon D

Look on this page a d scroll down to recommended settings. He’s done way more work than I did figuring it out

https://www.vortexradar.com/2019/04/...adar-detector/

also below that he details how he runs his personal one. I live in the mountains so run wide open. Exception being a memorize the stores as stated above.

LargePuppy

Hey thanks for this! Are you running the latest firmware (1.33 I think?)

Tier1Terrier

Thanks, I never made it to the bottom of that page till now. Glad to see all those recommended settings. Looks like a good start!

Tier1Terrier

Yes

subwoofer

I use advanced mode with K block on and K band sensitivity turned down to 30%. The detector still gives a lot of false alerts on K band in city driving. If K band is not a concern, turning it off may be the only option. I encounter K band on rural backroads so I leave it on at 30%. Works very well with the occasional false alert. City I turn it off.

slimmn

I also just purchased the R7 a few weeks ago, and pretty much followed vortexradar's recommendations, with some very minor tweaks of my own. Seems to work pretty well. I don't speed much in the city driving anyways, so I tend to ignore the false signals. I also use Waze if on the highway.

SwedeInNY

This is a great little unit. If anyone is interested in one I'm selling mine on the Marketplace (https://rennlist.com/forums/market/1227089) as I'm soon to move out of the country to a place were LEOs only use laser... Also listing my Blendmount (separate link in the R7 listing).

LargePuppy

Fantastic deal for a fantastic detector!

TD_05

I also have a R7 and get a fair number of falses with K band, especially in town. You said "City I turn it off", do you mean you turn off detector while in town, or is there a way to have different settings for City vs Highway etc? IE Highway 30% K, City K off?

Thanks,
TD

straka

Its helpful to have a USB to Cigarette type connector for plugging in and turning on your detector going through the setups. This way you can do the setup process following YouTube on your computer in your house. An earlier Vortex YouTube video gave out this part address to purchase on Amazon.

ARECORD USB to 12V DC Adapter - USB A Male to 12V Car Cigarette Lighter Socket Female Power Converter (Max Output 12V 0.8A)
[size=13px]Very inexpensive.[/size]

Also I find using 'dark mode' on my R7 works well. Only displays on an alert.

Levy

with 40 years of radar detector ownership under my belt with dozens of detectors......i consider myself very knowledgeable on the subject. But i still follow and do whatever Vortexradar tells me to do with ANY given detector =). dude knows his sh*t.

just upgraded my MAX360c to a Redline 360C and the first thing i did was visit Vortexradar for setup instruction.

Martin S.

I just plug in my latest Model Valentine 1, have WAZE on my iPhone, easy peasy. Between the V-1 and WAZE, any "threats" are generally identified, or at least htye have been.