Aircraft laser strikes hit new record with 20 incidents in one night

Re: Dangerous, stupid and highly illegal"

I'm 70 miles (100km) from a major metropolitan airport, their primary approach vector was consolidated about a year ago to a single path over the mountains, and the folks a couple miles south of me, who live in a very remote rural and quiet canyon, are quite annoyed at the non-stop stream of big jets , spaced 30 seconds apart all day and night that now fly directly over them. as this valley is up 1000' elevation from sea level, the planes are flying at 6000 or 7000' above sea level, they can be quite loud.

that all said, to the topic at hand.... green laser pointers. I'm an amateur astronomer, and use these at public events to point out the night sky features we're showing the public. There's a new generation of these lasers that are WAY brighter than advertised... I bought a pair of supposedly 5mW green lasers, that are easily 30-40 mW compared with my old 5mw lasers. the older ones used 2 AAA batteries, and were quite sensitive to cold and low voltage, they'd stop working if the batteries drop below 1.4V each (2.8V total). These new 'laser 303' lasers use 18650 LiIon rechargables. I measured the electrical power consumption of one at 1.2 watts, and at the typical efficiencies of the IR diodes, IR laser crystal, and frequency-doubler crystal these use, that comes to 30-40mW actual radiated power. frankly, for my star pointer use, I preferred the old 'actually' 4-5mW lasers, but their battery consumption was ridiculous.

I suspect this increasing stream of reports in the press will be followed by banning them entirely.

Re: Which came first?

Not as simple as that. Sometimes it was the airport, sometimes it was the city. Also, the area affected by the noises can be somewhat large. I once lived in an apartment that was in the flight path BWI used during one type of bad weather. I understand the particular climb and turn combination pilots have to make to execute the takeoff causes rather more noise than the standard one. Most of the time I didn't notice, but I did occasionally. I was a good 20 minute drive from the airport. So you're talking about prohibiting housing in more than 600 square miles just for a small arc covering the apartment complex I lived in.

Re: Dangerous, stupid and highly illegal"

it's to do with high-powered lasers now being cheaply available online.

They have been for some time now though surely?

If the availability hasn't really changed over recent years, but the behaviour has changed then perhaps something other than the tendency for not giving a shit about anybody else is to blame for the increase?

And just to re-iterate: I do not condone what these people do. Regardless of what excuses they come up with, their actions can never be justified.

I only mentioned the airport development since I've seen the extreme anger that the Heathrow trials last year caused when there were meetings between locals and Heathrow management. When you see it first hand it's not difficult to imagine that anger translating into this sort of behaviour regardless of how unreasonable - and illegal - such actions may be, especially since the changes trialled at Heathrow have already been put into practice in the US, presumably causing the same problems and the same levels of frustration.

Re: "We don't know if the pilots were looking at our wimmin"

I believe that he is making some reference to some of the recent articles about drones and prvacy

here is one of them

http://m.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/30/man_arrested_shooting_camera_drone/

It appers that the KneeJerk crowd are strong in the force today Luke....

mirror

"Make them fail to work if pointed upwards, at more than (say) 60 degrees."

A measure easily defeated with a mirror, while inconveniencing many legitimate uses, like pointing out details of frescoes in ceilings.

"Going forward, ensure that all manufacturers agree that commercial pointers etc. use almost the same frequencies to minimise the variance."

Nice idea, but I think at least part of the problem is that some overseas vendors are selling class 3 devices over the internet branded as "professional" laser pointers. Since they don't comply with your laws, or with plain common sense, they aren't likely to comply with a well-intentioned suggestion.

One Word

Peril-sensitive sunglasses.

Oh....