RadarBusters mobile command post…

With RadarBusters, I spend allot of time on the road attending trade shows, meeting with clients and manufactures, doing custom installs, and performing our own product tests or attending the testing venues of others, such as Speed Measurement Laboratories Radar Detector Shoot Out and the Guys of Lidar.

Last year, as we started shopping around for a replacement for our fifth wheel motor home, we made a list of must have items for our new rig.

Topping the list was the unit had to have a garage to both transport our specialized vehicles and to have an area to do installs.  As I also make it a point to personally answer all e-mail inquiries, the rig had to have reliable Internet connectivity. And as many of our trips are extended, we also wanted a rig was comfortable and that had power.

Many of the rigs we looked at were way out of the price range of a retired cop, who was now overseeing a growing radar detector and jammer consulting and sales company. But one of the rigs that we had our sites on, were the Renegade coaches manufactured by Kibbi.

I kept an eye out for a used rig on Ebay, and other Internet sites looking for a deal on a used rig and a few days before Christmas, 2005, I found the coach of my dreams on an obscure website for a Honda car dealer in California. I called and the salesman and he said that they took the coach on consignment in June, that the owner had some medical and financial problems and they really needed to sell the coach soon. The salesman explained that the coach only had 4000 miles on it, that the owner took delivery in New York, drove it to California, had some medical problems and parked it at their dealership asking for them to sell it.

That evening I called the owner and he explained that he needed to get some money together before the first of the year and that he would be willing to sell the coach for half the price he paid for it, provided that I picked the coach up!

Not to pass a good deal like this up, the first thing the following morning I got a cashiers check from my bank and flew to the California car dealer. The salesman seemed relieved that they were finally going to be able to free up space on their lot for something they could sell, like Hondas.

I drove the coach home that day and we then began our personal customization of the coach.

The original owner’s plans were to use the garage area of the coach, as a kennel, as he was involved in training and showing dogs. As we would be using this area to haul our Harley Ultra or our Polaris Ranger, we first put down E-Track on the floor so we could secure the bikes and ATVs.

I often found myself in remote locations, where the Internet cell cards could not establish any services. And as a reliable Internet connection was a priority, we purchased and installed a satellite Internet system with a wireless router.

As I am in the business of reviewing and selling high performance radar detectors, I chose the Beltronics STi Driver. We hardwired it and used the visor clip to attach it to the drivers side visor.

After we got the coach outfitted, we made our first trip to the “Guys of Lidar” test in Lorain, Ohio.  While in route, we stopped by the Escort – Beltronics headquarters to visit with their staff.

Over the past eight months, we put over 30,000 miles on the coach, using it as a command post for the 2006 Radar Detector Shoot Out in El Paso, setting up our motorcycle radar display in Sturgis South Dakota, and attending trade shows and motorcycling events though out the southwest. 

Plans are now underway to use the coach as a command center for our sponsored entries for the 2007 Cannonball Race.