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Laser Injures Delta Pilot's Eye
stormfish writes "The Washington Times is reporting that laser light from an unknown source injured a pilot's eye as he was flying a Boeing 737 from Dallas to Salt Lake City. A 5 milliwatt laser pointer is strong enough to damage a person's eye, and stronger laser's are not that hard to come by. Unfortunately, having pilots wear colored laser safety glasses would be impractical as that would make it impossible to interpret the colored symbols on paper maps and cockpit displays."
Having pilots wear coloured safety glasses wouldn't be impractical, it would be impossible; the only colour that would block all laser frequencies is black.
Though not easily portable I have a 15W CO2 laser, which could be rigged up in a pickup bed quite simply. Put a camper shell over it and it'd be quite hard to figure out where the beam came from. Setup time would be roughly 1/2 hour from when the vehicle quits moving. There is no teardown time so you could shoot and run. I was able to pick up nearly everything for under $200 surplus. I've got to figure even larger rigs are easily acquired.
-nB
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On approach for landing in Seattle (I was just a passenger, not pilot) I was looking out the window into downtown Bellevue. From an area near the Bellevue main mall (hard to tell where exactly from 5000 feet, and 3 miles over) was some kind of laser light show, and the laser in describing its pattern for the show occasionally and momentarily came directly through the window, and directly in my eyes. Even this very brief exposure was painful, and my eyes had after-images for hours! The laser was green, so I assume an even higher energy than a red laser (don't know for sure).
Ever since that encounter I've always wondered if it was just an incredible fluke, or something that could happen easily again. Now I know.
I'm a private pilot, so I certainly won't make light of this problem. But please...is every new way to hurt somebody going to be another weapon in the terrorist arsenal? Are we going to assume that everytime something happens to someone, a terrorist is behind it? I for one am tired of our leaders trying to make us afraid.
Read the article. This wasn't a quote from any leader; its from a retired Navy airman who was hit in the eye with a laser during a recon mission and is arguing with the Navy Appeals committee to try and get a purple heart for it.
In other words, he has a vested interest in making the incident sound as scary and threatening as possible.
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
I remember reading something similar in a Reader's Digest a few years ago:
Apparently the US was tracking a Russian "Laundry Ship" north of Canada because they somehow found it suspicious. A while later, the helicopter pilot that had been filming the ship came to the doctor having vision problems. Upon close examination, there was a grid of little damaged, scar-tissue-surrounded holes in his retina. Upon examination of the video, they found a brief flash that when freeze-framed proved to be a grid of bright little laser points that had flashed at the helicopter from the boat! So it's nothing new to use lasers to destroy the vision of expensive-to-train pilots. The question is, was this stray laser light or something intentional as was the case with the "laundry ship"?
~Ben
I was watching a college bowl game a couple years back and noticed a light spot, about 5 ft diameter following one of the team coaches. It occured to me that some sh!t for brains in the stands was trying to blind the coach with a laser pointer. I wonder if they check for these when frisking people entering stadiums now.
In Clancy's Debt of Honor the crew of a 747 was blinded by agents with a high intensity light and it certainly occured to me that near an airport such a thing could post a considerable hazard.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
How about getting rid of plane food, since in the slight chance you get a bad batch, the entire crew can get diarrhea and not be able to land the plane.
I know you were semi-joking here, but this is exactly why many airlines require their first officers and captains to have different meals. It makes it that much harder for terrorists to take over a plane after slipping roofies into the food supply, because they would have to poison all the food, not just one particular dish.
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In Korea, long hair is for old people!
From the article:
The plane's two pilots reported that the Boeing 737 had been five miles from the airport when they saw a laser beam inside the cockpit
If I read this right it says there was a beam (a visible point of light) inside the cockpit. This may not be the case, but it is one possible interpretation.
If this is the case it's pretty serious. Think about it. What kind of tracking system is necessary to get a laser beam into a cockpit window of a flying plane from the ground and keep it there long enough to be seen by the pilots?
I served in an infantry battalion alongside two tank battalions in Germany in 1982, and shortly after I got there, some moron in one of the then-new M1 tanks decided to test the new-fangled laser rangefinders on an automobile speeding along a nearby country road. He succeeded in permanently blinding the driver, who suffered further devastating injuries in the subsequent crash. If I remember correctly, the tank gunner was convicted at his court-martial and got twenty years in Fort Leavenworth military penitentiary. The point is that the M1's laser rangefinder was orders of magnitude more powerful than any commercial laser pointer, the gunner was using a powerful magnifying optical instrument on a gyro-stabilized tank turret to track an object moving much slower than an aircraft in flight.
From my limited contact with the optics in an M1 (courtesy a tanker buddy), I appreciate the extreme difficulty of keeping cross-hairs on a fast-moving target, and I seriously doubt that anyone could have hit the windshield of an aircraft in flight with a handheld laser. They would have to have been using some sort of stabilized mount and telescopic rig. Were there any military units on exercises in the area? Bored soldiers will do the stupidest shit. Trust me; I know from personal experience.
Maybe you can't find the article because it was a RUSSIAN ship that the pilot was observing when he got hit.
Here's a quote from recent article that mentions the incident:
"In one case, Naval Lt. Cmdr. Jack Daly and Canadian helicopter pilot Capt. Pat Barnes suffered eye injuries hours after an aerial surveillance mission to photograph a Russian merchant ship that had been shadowing the ballistic-missile submarine USS Ohio in Washington state's Strait of Juan de Fuca."
You don't have any anti-American bias do you?
Insert witty sig here.
I shone my cheapo LASER pointer at my buddies house one night (Trying to find line of site for future WLAN developments). His house is about 300M away, but in amongst other houses, so this was a great way to identify his roof peak and bedroom window. He said that the beam was bigger then his head (although his head is not abnormally large, it isn't exactly small) and looked like someone had a huge spotlight in our kitchen window. Although it looked really bright, he was able to look directly into the beam without pain. Granted there was enough humidity in the air for us to see the beam.
About 8 years ago I was working on a broadcast transmitter that was in a room on the roof of a apartment tower near Keesler Air Force Base, Biloxi, Mississippi. It was shortly after dark when I emerged from the transmitter shack and I stopped to notice a C-130 on final approach to Keesler. A laser that was part of a display at one of the Casinos painted the bottom of the plane from the nose to tail. The plane wobbled as the pilot was temporarily blinded by the beam. Reading in the newspaper the next day confirmed that the pilot had been temporarily blinded by the laser and the co-pilot had finished the approach and landing.
At the time laser light shows were the rage at the newly built casinos. Several had them, and all used green lasers whose beams were panned around the sky by motorized mirrors. As these casinos were built surrounding an AirForce base, they were supposed to have safety shutoffs that, during operations, would disable the lasers upon request by the base. An investigation found that these safety devices had been bypassed by maintenance personnel, including a laser whose safety shutter had been defeated by wrapping wire around it.
Needless to say, the laser light shows were dismantled quickly and were never brought back.
Fortunately, in this case, the optics spread the beam out with distance, instead of keeping tight collumination, so the pilot did not suffer long term damage.
These lasers were in the range of 50W, not some little 5mW laser pointer. Their beams could be seen for miles orthogonally and would paint patterns on the underside of clouds over two miles up. Your 5mW laser does not have the collimation, nor the power after atmospheric absorbtion to do much after around 100 ft.
However, I must admit, lasers in the 50W range are available, would do grevious eye damage at distance, and could be used to down an airplane by blinding the pilots.