Any of you tech people got theories on what this might signify?
Comments
Disturbing? — 19 Comments
Um, that diode lasers are getting powerful and cheap enough that yahoos who like to shine them at planes can afford them?
…and that the NY Post likes to hype non-stories with words like “powerful” and “penetrated”.
There were a bunch of cases of guys shining these at police helicopters a couple years ago.
Its an idiot with a laser pointer.
while they are a bit more powerful than your standard, and a few sold are a tiny bit more powerful, they are not really capable of doing what they are claiming.
I have lots of lasers, and in general what people are used to using are not powerful enough to even be used as ‘dazzlers’ which is what they are pretending they are. (even the greenie boat that was sunk tried to use them this way).
they are basically over prosecuting… the man with the red one and people with the green ones.
pilots are also exaggerating. if they weren’t, they would be idiots to use their eyes to try to identify the location of where its coming from. (duh award).
its definitely possible to up power output a bit (but its not easy. they only operate in a tiny amperage range (they are not voltage devices).
the kind that WOULD be, and i have yet to see anyone use them that way, would be the expensive yag lasers that edmunds and other places cell and are used for laser shows.
but even they are not that dangerous when you consider that most of these things are happening over the distances of many football fields.
Collimating and preventing dispersal at that distance is why we don’t use lasers for point to point communication.
that doesnt mean that such things are not possible.
however, why bother with a yag boosted double pumped expensive laser, when you can put together 5 or so that work at borderline infrared and at over an amp each.
[here is a hint… i am famous in the LASER faq… from the early days of the net, some of my stuff is there… 🙂 ]
Visible laser pointers (400-700 nm) operating at less than 1 mW power are Class 2 or II
visible laser pointers operating with 1—5 mW power are Class 3A or IIIa.
Class 3B/IIIb lasers (operating between 5-500 mW) and Class 4/IV lasers (operating above 500 mW) can not be legally promoted as laser pointers.
they sell the blue ones and infrared ones as laser burners. they can light matches, and they can burn through balloons.
look at the ouput…
a class II is a tiny 1.5 volt device.
even class 3A is pretty safe, though not if you shine it directly into the eye. they do make SOME very expensive pointers that put out this way for large auditorium and lasers shows that put their lights on ceilings and clouds.
above that, you get into serious wattage, but also need serious expertise, as its VERY easy to blow the lasers.
these can be VERY dangerous, but so is a HUGE part of reality where the liberals dont know… (i was on the rim of a live volcano in the most active volcanic areas in teh world, a year and a half before, a few were killed when it burped. much more dangerous than the lasers i have… )
these are idiots with pointers…
none of them i have every seen busted had more than class II maybe class 3A at most.
i have a module that is CW (continuous wave) and take over 5 amps…
they are more than 5000 times more powerful than the laser pointer we are discussing. PW, i can boost them higher.
they are not powerful enough to ablate though…
and working with those are trickier…
after all… cooling 30 wats (30,000 times the power), in a 2mm square area is a challenge.
the heat is greater than that at a nuclear power plant core
and 30 watts is only enouhg to cut plastic, and wood, and engrave metal IF you have a special coating..
you need to go up higher to etch metal, cut glass, ablate, etc.
basically, they are people without much brains.
[after all, you should see what a smart person can do with a few common items that would make them shiver]
Artfldgr: thank you for the information.
I remember a kerfuffle around some years back involving a Russian trawler off the coast of Washington zapping an American military aircraft with a LASER and the pilot suffered some kind of eye trouble, not blinding, but some kind of damage. Either corneal or retinal.
Testing, 123?
“A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”
Those who discount the pilot’s report and dismiss it are assuming that the pilot is, at best exaggerating and at worst lying. Perhaps but what if he’s not?
For sure, such cheap devices can blind a pilot for a second, if he is reckless enough to look at the source of this light. That is why laser pointers are not recommended to look at.
These stories have been circulating for about 10 years and the laser pointers that have to be under a certain power have been modified by hundreds of people. The ones that are legal are not powerful enough (or steady enough when held by hand) to do anything to a pilot.
If there is ever an idiot that modifies and uses targeting to pinpoint a laser on an airline and the airline crashes – God help that person – his/her conscience should be too great.
Probably someone trying to down the jet. Also, probably a little more serious than someone playing with a laser pointer (in that, it takes planning to be in the right spot to hit the cockpit of a plane trying to land)… also, most people know about *not* trying to hit an airplane…. because it could be bad.
It’s a moron. A smart terrorist would not practice and tip his hand.
is a fairly detailed account of the laser incident in The Strait of Juan de Fuca in 1997.
Thanks Artfldgr. An informative comment.
I agree with the ‘moron with a laser’ theory.
Nolanimrod,
that was a different device. i spoke the term… look up dazzler… the russian dazzler is powerful enouhg that those pilots suffered blank spots in their vision.
that is, wherever they saw it, they lost vision.
so if they looked straight at it, they have a blank spot in the middle. from the side, they have blank spots in their side vision.
these are technically not legal under the conventions of war, as they are considered cruel.
A dazzler is a type of a directed-energy weapon employing intense visible light, usually generated by a laser (laser dazzler). Dazzlers can operate in infrared when their targets are electronic sensors. Most of the contemporary systems are man-portable, and operate in either the red (a semiconductor laser) or green (a DPSS laser) part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Weapons designed to cause permanent blindness are banned by the 1995 United Nations Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons. The dazzler is a non-lethal weapon intended to cause temporary blindness or disorientation and therefore fall outside this protocol.
Terra-3: alleged use of a Soviet dazzler against a Space Shuttle in 1984
hows that for Russia ALWAYS playing nasty games. they never stop.
Terra-3 was a laser testing centre, located on the Sary Shagan anti-ballistic missile testing range in Karagandy Province of Kazakhstan.
Development of laser weapons in the Soviet Union began in 1964-1965.[1] Vympel OKB was among the companies working on these weapons. In the 1970s, they built the Terra-3 complex for research purposes. It was meant as an ABM and ASAT weapon, but even the Astrofizika high energy red ruby and carbon dioxide lasers that were eventually installed proved to be insufficient for use against ballistic missiles. The first applications would have to be limited to anti-satellite, and then primarily to blind optical sensors.
On October 10, 1984, the Terra-3 facility deliberately directed a low-energy laser beam at the US Space Shuttle Challenger (OV-99).
This caused some of the on-board equipment to malfunction, as well as causing discomfort and temporary blindness to crew members.[2][3][4] This action led to a US diplomatic protest.
Probably someone trying to down the jet.
well, the last incident about a week ago, was against a helicopter. the man was caught sitting in his car playing around with a common pointer.
the invcident before that was a man and his young daughter on the stoop.
basically people get wowed at how far they can make a dot appear… and a plane is a long distance away, with a nice white clean surface.
so people use their 70 dollar high power hand held penlight laser…
the laser is bright enough to disperse off the windshield (which is always pitted) and make the cabin shine as it bounces around..
to those who are made alarmist in classes, this would make em upset…
by the way… a DPSS laser with a lot of oomph costs quite a bit of dollars… and if your spending that much on something, your not that stupid to be pointing it at a craft.
[meanwhile, there are a lot more extremely dangerous things that you CAN do that they dont do a thing about. and i dont write them out as i dont want an idiot to try it]
it takes planning to be in the right spot to hit the cockpit of a plane trying to land
really?
well, in ny you can park at a gas station on the grand central parkway… you can get a shot of an engine, or a cockpit
from woodside, you can hit one on approach if your on the ground, but its easier to see them from the elevated 7 train
you can get off at flushing queens and see them come in along that track
then there is corona park
and thats just one airport…
so no.. you need no planning… if you can see the tiny window in the front… you can hit it with a laser.
but at the distances they are talking about (over a mile), dispersion has it spread out a lot.
The light can be bright enough to temporarily destroy night time vision. If the airplane is on final at the time the laser light hits the cockpit, the pilot could lose control and what follows could lead to loss of control of the plane. Surprisingly, fairly dangerous and an indictable offense.
> also, most people know about *not* trying to hit an airplane…. because it could be bad.
a) 50% of the populace is, by definition, of sub-average intellect. Amazingly, some large chunk of this 50% (and even a small chunk of 155 million people is rather large) doesn’t make rational discrimination a strong point in their life choices. In defense of this notion I will cite three words: “Maury Povich” and “Cops”.
b) Of all people, regardless of intellectual talent, there’s a small number who just can’t resist trying to pull off something that, in retrospect, might be incredibly stupid, but they just weren’t thinking about all the consequences. Pretty much anyone voting for Obama, for example.
Leave a Reply
HTML tags allowed in your
comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>
Um, that diode lasers are getting powerful and cheap enough that yahoos who like to shine them at planes can afford them?
…and that the NY Post likes to hype non-stories with words like “powerful” and “penetrated”.
There were a bunch of cases of guys shining these at police helicopters a couple years ago.
Its an idiot with a laser pointer.
while they are a bit more powerful than your standard, and a few sold are a tiny bit more powerful, they are not really capable of doing what they are claiming.
I have lots of lasers, and in general what people are used to using are not powerful enough to even be used as ‘dazzlers’ which is what they are pretending they are. (even the greenie boat that was sunk tried to use them this way).
they are basically over prosecuting… the man with the red one and people with the green ones.
pilots are also exaggerating. if they weren’t, they would be idiots to use their eyes to try to identify the location of where its coming from. (duh award).
its definitely possible to up power output a bit (but its not easy. they only operate in a tiny amperage range (they are not voltage devices).
the kind that WOULD be, and i have yet to see anyone use them that way, would be the expensive yag lasers that edmunds and other places cell and are used for laser shows.
but even they are not that dangerous when you consider that most of these things are happening over the distances of many football fields.
Collimating and preventing dispersal at that distance is why we don’t use lasers for point to point communication.
that doesnt mean that such things are not possible.
however, why bother with a yag boosted double pumped expensive laser, when you can put together 5 or so that work at borderline infrared and at over an amp each.
[here is a hint… i am famous in the LASER faq… from the early days of the net, some of my stuff is there… 🙂 ]
Visible laser pointers (400-700 nm) operating at less than 1 mW power are Class 2 or II
visible laser pointers operating with 1—5 mW power are Class 3A or IIIa.
Class 3B/IIIb lasers (operating between 5-500 mW) and Class 4/IV lasers (operating above 500 mW) can not be legally promoted as laser pointers.
they sell the blue ones and infrared ones as laser burners. they can light matches, and they can burn through balloons.
look at the ouput…
a class II is a tiny 1.5 volt device.
even class 3A is pretty safe, though not if you shine it directly into the eye. they do make SOME very expensive pointers that put out this way for large auditorium and lasers shows that put their lights on ceilings and clouds.
above that, you get into serious wattage, but also need serious expertise, as its VERY easy to blow the lasers.
these can be VERY dangerous, but so is a HUGE part of reality where the liberals dont know… (i was on the rim of a live volcano in the most active volcanic areas in teh world, a year and a half before, a few were killed when it burped. much more dangerous than the lasers i have… )
these are idiots with pointers…
none of them i have every seen busted had more than class II maybe class 3A at most.
i have a module that is CW (continuous wave) and take over 5 amps…
they are more than 5000 times more powerful than the laser pointer we are discussing. PW, i can boost them higher.
they are not powerful enough to ablate though…
and working with those are trickier…
after all… cooling 30 wats (30,000 times the power), in a 2mm square area is a challenge.
the heat is greater than that at a nuclear power plant core
and 30 watts is only enouhg to cut plastic, and wood, and engrave metal IF you have a special coating..
you need to go up higher to etch metal, cut glass, ablate, etc.
basically, they are people without much brains.
[after all, you should see what a smart person can do with a few common items that would make them shiver]
Artfldgr: thank you for the information.
I remember a kerfuffle around some years back involving a Russian trawler off the coast of Washington zapping an American military aircraft with a LASER and the pilot suffered some kind of eye trouble, not blinding, but some kind of damage. Either corneal or retinal.
Testing, 123?
“A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”
Those who discount the pilot’s report and dismiss it are assuming that the pilot is, at best exaggerating and at worst lying. Perhaps but what if he’s not?
For sure, such cheap devices can blind a pilot for a second, if he is reckless enough to look at the source of this light. That is why laser pointers are not recommended to look at.
These stories have been circulating for about 10 years and the laser pointers that have to be under a certain power have been modified by hundreds of people. The ones that are legal are not powerful enough (or steady enough when held by hand) to do anything to a pilot.
If there is ever an idiot that modifies and uses targeting to pinpoint a laser on an airline and the airline crashes – God help that person – his/her conscience should be too great.
Probably someone trying to down the jet. Also, probably a little more serious than someone playing with a laser pointer (in that, it takes planning to be in the right spot to hit the cockpit of a plane trying to land)… also, most people know about *not* trying to hit an airplane…. because it could be bad.
It’s a moron. A smart terrorist would not practice and tip his hand.
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/107384
is a fairly detailed account of the laser incident in The Strait of Juan de Fuca in 1997.
Thanks Artfldgr. An informative comment.
I agree with the ‘moron with a laser’ theory.
Nolanimrod,
that was a different device. i spoke the term… look up dazzler… the russian dazzler is powerful enouhg that those pilots suffered blank spots in their vision.
that is, wherever they saw it, they lost vision.
so if they looked straight at it, they have a blank spot in the middle. from the side, they have blank spots in their side vision.
these are technically not legal under the conventions of war, as they are considered cruel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzler_%28weapon%29
A dazzler is a type of a directed-energy weapon employing intense visible light, usually generated by a laser (laser dazzler). Dazzlers can operate in infrared when their targets are electronic sensors. Most of the contemporary systems are man-portable, and operate in either the red (a semiconductor laser) or green (a DPSS laser) part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Weapons designed to cause permanent blindness are banned by the 1995 United Nations Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons. The dazzler is a non-lethal weapon intended to cause temporary blindness or disorientation and therefore fall outside this protocol.
Terra-3: alleged use of a Soviet dazzler against a Space Shuttle in 1984
hows that for Russia ALWAYS playing nasty games. they never stop.
Terra-3 was a laser testing centre, located on the Sary Shagan anti-ballistic missile testing range in Karagandy Province of Kazakhstan.
Development of laser weapons in the Soviet Union began in 1964-1965.[1] Vympel OKB was among the companies working on these weapons. In the 1970s, they built the Terra-3 complex for research purposes. It was meant as an ABM and ASAT weapon, but even the Astrofizika high energy red ruby and carbon dioxide lasers that were eventually installed proved to be insufficient for use against ballistic missiles. The first applications would have to be limited to anti-satellite, and then primarily to blind optical sensors.
On October 10, 1984, the Terra-3 facility deliberately directed a low-energy laser beam at the US Space Shuttle Challenger (OV-99).
This caused some of the on-board equipment to malfunction, as well as causing discomfort and temporary blindness to crew members.[2][3][4] This action led to a US diplomatic protest.
Probably someone trying to down the jet.
well, the last incident about a week ago, was against a helicopter. the man was caught sitting in his car playing around with a common pointer.
the invcident before that was a man and his young daughter on the stoop.
basically people get wowed at how far they can make a dot appear… and a plane is a long distance away, with a nice white clean surface.
so people use their 70 dollar high power hand held penlight laser…
the laser is bright enough to disperse off the windshield (which is always pitted) and make the cabin shine as it bounces around..
to those who are made alarmist in classes, this would make em upset…
by the way… a DPSS laser with a lot of oomph costs quite a bit of dollars… and if your spending that much on something, your not that stupid to be pointing it at a craft.
[meanwhile, there are a lot more extremely dangerous things that you CAN do that they dont do a thing about. and i dont write them out as i dont want an idiot to try it]
it takes planning to be in the right spot to hit the cockpit of a plane trying to land
really?
well, in ny you can park at a gas station on the grand central parkway… you can get a shot of an engine, or a cockpit
from woodside, you can hit one on approach if your on the ground, but its easier to see them from the elevated 7 train
you can get off at flushing queens and see them come in along that track
then there is corona park
and thats just one airport…
so no.. you need no planning… if you can see the tiny window in the front… you can hit it with a laser.
but at the distances they are talking about (over a mile), dispersion has it spread out a lot.
The light can be bright enough to temporarily destroy night time vision. If the airplane is on final at the time the laser light hits the cockpit, the pilot could lose control and what follows could lead to loss of control of the plane. Surprisingly, fairly dangerous and an indictable offense.
> also, most people know about *not* trying to hit an airplane…. because it could be bad.
a) 50% of the populace is, by definition, of sub-average intellect. Amazingly, some large chunk of this 50% (and even a small chunk of 155 million people is rather large) doesn’t make rational discrimination a strong point in their life choices. In defense of this notion I will cite three words: “Maury Povich” and “Cops”.
b) Of all people, regardless of intellectual talent, there’s a small number who just can’t resist trying to pull off something that, in retrospect, might be incredibly stupid, but they just weren’t thinking about all the consequences. Pretty much anyone voting for Obama, for example.