[ATMoB-discuss] Green Lasers?

[Brewster]

At 10:28 PM 3/6/2007, valleli at rcn.com wrote:
>some lives could be lost out of foolishness.

OK, pardon my ignorance, but I thought the FBI or some similar group 
ringed the white house with (high power) lasers to "warn" pilots (I 
can't find a reference on what power level it puts out, but it costs 
$500K, so seems like it would have some oomph...)

During the summer Canobie Lake has what must be a pretty high power 
laser blasting away at night (I can sometimes see it from Andover, a 
good 10+ miles away) and they're in the flight path for Manchester airport.

How can a single beam from a small pocket pointer possibly be held 
steady enough to hit two 1/4" (pupil) targets in succession (four if 
we add teh co-pilot) at a few thousand feet, and low enough beam 
spread to do much other than look like a green light?  Those big 
spotlights they put up at auto dealers would seem a bigger threat - 
they put out kilowatts of light into a large beam, much more likely 
to hit a target for a long time...

Don't get me wrong, I certainly believe the last thing a pilot needs 
is distraction when taking off or landing and don't think there's any 
reason to even begin to "take a chance" if there's a plane anywhere in site.

The green lasers are a *huge* asset for star parties and yes, people 
will do stupid things, but they also do stupid things with kitchen 
knives and guns too and we haven't outlawed those yet...(ok a knife 
on the ground isn't much of a threat to a plane in the air...)

Certainly I agree for the need for care on the ground as at close 
range anything over a few mW could be a problem. But shooting planes 
out of the sky?



Regards,

Brewster