Terry,
I don't think it is a spike. I have several tri-color Z-Stuff signals with the IR sensors. On all of them, when I initially power them up, the red light comes on momentarily and the the signal goes to green and operates properly. I think it might be the electronics of the sensor on power up and not a malfunction. The same thing might be happening to the IR sensors thus causing the gates to initially go down (default to red) upon power up.