Aircrafts

ElektroFreak said:

I would like to interject that while I agree that shining a laser at an aircraft is a terrible idea, the odds of a beam hitting an airborne plane at just the right angle as to enter the cockpit windscreen and flash-blind the pilot enough to jeopardize the safety of the flight are fairly slim. And that's even taking into account divergence. There are airports out there where someone could get the positioning just right, but for the most part I think that the hazards are mildly overstated. Helicopters on the other hand are a whole different story.

Also, throughout the history of mankind there has been a little thing i like to call the dipsh*t factor. No matter what we do as a society to make life safer, there will ALWAYS be some dipsh*t out there who will mess it up for the rest of us. Banning things has never changed this since the minute you ban something, these retards find a new way of accomplishing whatever task they are attempting. For example, if guns are banned, you'll likely see a large spike in the number of stabbing deaths. The dipsh*t factor is a fact of life just like Newton's laws, Murphy's law and a whole bunch of other laws i could name...

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From what ive read its the people sitting at the end of the runway which seems to be the biggest threat. Depending how many runways are active with landing craft, who knows.. I heard that larger international airports accomidate 70 inbound flights per hour. Its not the craft at 10-30,000ft. that would be the issue. I cant see a cockpit being penetrated at that altitude, unless another plane is involved.

http://writingcompany.blogs.com/this_isnt_writing_its_typ/2004/12/blinded_by_the _.html

Quote from above:---

The Vision Laboratory at the Naval Air Systems Command's (NAVAIR) Human Systems
Division has developed a laser-blinding countermeasures system for aircraft called a
"Laser Event Recorder" (LER). The LER lets pilots know if they're being targeted by a
laser, and whether that laser can damage their eyes.

A green light on the box means the system is functioning and everything is normal;

yellow means a laser is pointed at them but is not an eye hazard; and

red means they are being targeted by a laser that threatens their vision.  

Some airline pilots are demanding the LERs be fitted to commercial aircraft,
given the growing number of laser-related incidents.

Hmmm... welders use electronic controlled welding helmets.... Hmmm

Hmmm.. Maybe an new product..... :

Yeah Wanaburn... that's what I was thinking... ROFL.... ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D... ROFL ;D ;D

got this from laserpointersafety.com hope it helps

lol you think they could make some special kind of large scale multi color filter to put on planes and such? might take some testing for that!

that graph seems a bit off...50mW isn't 10 times more visible than a 5mW it's more like 3-4 times more ever 4x the power 2x the brightness because our vision isn't linear. I wonder if they thought about the divergence of a laser and the angle of the plane. I have planes flying over my house all the time that are only a few hundred feet up and I can't even see the windshields on them. they would have to be much lower and at an angle to even the the laser in the cockpit. I live just about 2 miles away from an airport so I don't use my laser outside anyway just in case

lol i might try to edit this, give me info plz!!

Its more of the glare you see on the recieving end. I had my wife shine a 5mw leadlight from 1/2 km away. She could see me from a 25 story balconey, she kept the dot 10-20  ft away from me and it apeared trained on my car and on me. It is much different on the recieving end of things.

DayOfShadows said:

lol you think they could make some special kind of large scale multi color filter to put on planes and such? might take some testing for that!

Click to expand...

Inside the windscreen like a tint would probaby eliminate the glare, and be cost effective. But its just too far fetched an idea for our time it would seem :-?

Thanks to everyone for your very interesting comments. A few thoughts...

maxkilz, you may be right about the brightness not being linear to the power increase. I may have spaced on the calculations. I am checking with a laser safety expert and will get back to the forum when I find out (And if I was wrong, I will of course change the diagram and text at laserpointersafety.com)

DayOfShadows, glad you liked the diagram! No need to edit it; I have the original (many layers in Photoshop) and will edit it as needed based on the linearity info from the laser safety expert.

lasersbee, thanks for the info on the NAVAIR Laser Event Recorder. Interestingly, this is made by an ILDA member, Optra Inc. I am not aware of any plans to put these on commercial aircraft. Not that they would tell even the SAE G-10T.

Maybe the government is secretly equipping aircraft with Laser Event Recorders, or other measures such as goggles and bandpass windscreens. However, if I had to guess, I would say that there is no widespread civil use due to cost and other operational considerations. Another reason to doubt this is the large number of people who would know about this; I'd think word would leak out somehow.

For us laser pointer enthusiasts, it really does not matter if planes have detectors, goggles or bandpass windscreens. Planes are hit almost every day in the U.S. and elsewhere, and authorities are getting fed up. They are not going to say "oh, never mind" even if all planes have multiple anti-laser devices. They are going to severely restrict or ban laser pointers. It is easiest for them and easiest to "sell" to worried pilots and the public.

That is why I keep stressing that the laser pointer community (including users, manufacturers, and dealers) needs to quickly take actions to stop laser pointer misuse and harassment. Otherwise the U.S., Canada and others will end up like U.K. and Australia.

wannaburn, ElektroFreak and others, I agree it is unlikely that a laser pointer user could cause an accident serious enough to down a plane. But for purposes of preventing a ban, it does not matter too much. Pilots should not have to put up with idiots deliberately aiming lasers into their cockpit.

As I have said before, accidents happen from a coincidence of unlikely conditions, any one of which is not enough to cause the crash. Nobody wants to be the first link in a very unfortunate chain of events.

I also agree that it would be stupid for an evil person to use lasers to try and down aircraft. It would be inefficient even if they used powerful commercial lasers or multiple arrays of high-powered pointers. There are much easier, more efficient ways to cause trouble, 'nuf said.

Also for wannaburn, I appreciate you going out and seeing the receiving end of a laser pointer at a large distance. Try being first directly in the beam, and then view from behind a typical partly-dirty windshield; see if the glare is spread more by the dirt and glass.

Remember that the effect on laser enthusiasts who know what to expect is MUCH different than the effect on pilots suddenly encountering something, not knowing if it is safe, if it means a gun or missile is at the other end, etc.

Thanks again to everyone for taking this seriously. Anything you can do to get the word out to others, on other forums etc. would be greatly appreciated.

OK, I got an answer from the laser safety expert I checked with. The correct relationship between laser power and visual effect is a square root relationship (not linear). Let's say a 5 mW laser produces a certain amount of glare on an aircraft windscreen at 1200 feet. Previously, I said a laser ten times as powerful (50 mW) will produce the same amount of glare at ten times the distance, or 12,000 feet. This is incorrect. If I understand the expert (Greg Makhov of LSDI), the distance will be the square root of the power increase. In the example, the 50 mW laser is 10x more powerful than the 5 mW laser; the square root of 10 is 3.162, so the equivalent glare distance is 3794 feet, not 12,000 (oops!).

I have re-done the aircraft hazard diagram and discussion at LaserPointerSafety.com, to reflect this correction. Also, there is a new table which shows the eye hazard, flashblindness, glare, distraction and "safe" distances for green lasers of various powers.

The main point continues to be that higher-power laser pointers can be a distraction or glare hazard for many miles. It is not quite as many miles as I thought it was but these hazard distances still are farther than many laser users might think.

maxkillz said:

that graph seems a bit off...50mW isn't 10 times more visible than a 5mW it's more like 3-4 times more ever 4x the power 2x the brightness because our vision isn't linear. I wonder if they thought about the divergence of a laser and the angle of the plane. I have planes flying over my house all the time that are only a few hundred feet up and I can't even see the windshields on them. they would have to be much lower and at an angle to even the the laser in the cockpit. I live just about 2 miles away from an airport so I don't use my laser outside anyway just in case

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Every airport is different, so every approach pattern is different. I live about 3/4 mile from the end of an airport runway, and I'm fairly certain I could put a dot from a handheld pointer on the cockpit window of 90% of the planes that land on that runway from that direction. With where I live, the timing (from the plane's perspective) of when I could hit the cockpit window would be anywhere from over 2 minutes to within 20 seconds before touchdown.

Granted, these won't be steady, they'll be flashes. But ILDA and experts aren't and haven't been talking about steady covering the window or permanent damage from direct eye hits.

For everyone (not just maxkillz), here's the best comparison I can think of: You're driving down the highway in the middle of the night at 80mph, and you're coming up on a construction site with a narrow bridge, barely wider than your car. Your eyes are completely night adapted, with dilated pupils. So you're aiming this vehicle between the guardrails, and 20 seconds before you're going to go through this bridge, a camera flash fills the entire windshield. You're 20 seconds from having to thread a needle in a car going 80mph, and you suddenly can't see anything. I'm sure we've all experienced camera flashes in very dark places. Sure, there's no permanent damage, and your vision will be back fairly quickly, maybe 10s or so, but in the meantime you're 20 seconds from head-on collision that will probably be fatal. Does that sound like a good situation?

What they're talking about is not a big need fro protection from being completely blinded or harmed by lasers, they're talking about distraction and flash blindness from the presence of a REALLY bright light, like a camera flash. Laser goggles are not a good solution for that. A good solution is to try to get people to stop shining them at airplanes or, regretfully, ban laser pointers. Yes, it's dumb, but airlines will win that battle unless there's no need for the battle to ever be fought, and the only way to prevent that battle is to stop shining lasers at airplanes.

---------------------------------

ilda- As far as what you're saying about pilot training, I think that is absolutely essential. After the recent story where a pilot suffered a stroke and was still helped to land safely, it got me thinking about how, with big airliners, those planes SHOULD be able to land with blind pilots. Pilots should definitely be trained to be able to land a plane even when they can't see. Whether it be from an accidental laser flash, an intentional blinding effort, or a sudden stroke like that pilot in the UK a few weeks ago, there's no reason in this day and age that pilots shouldn't be trained on what to do in cases of a sudden loss of vision. Keep up the good work on your site.

I was looking at a website mentioned by member, ildadirect, on safety with lasers with respect to pointing at airplanes, police, etc.
website is www.laserpointersafety.com
there is one part in the website about incidents, arrests, etc.
i think it is a must read.
dont be stupid with your laser.
they are handing out some serious punishment for hitting a plane. even with <5mw. some people were even hitting police helis with them.

note to senior members. might be good to list this website on the main forum page up at the top with a sticky.

I think I just had my first "OMG" moment with lasers, besides when my safety goggles broke.

I was using one of my crappy cameras to see if it would pick up the beam when bounced off a mirror, and I was looking at the screen and moving around. I moved the laser a little too high. I'm not sure if I got hit in the eye or not. I don't think so because I barely saw any green at all, it felt like it hit the bottom of my eyelid. And I would have a blind spot, right? I don't notice anything wrong, besides the fact that my eye feels strange. (I'm probably imagining this, though)
This just happened a few minutes ago.
I'm an idiot.

well LRMN,
I am a novice at this and dont have the expertise of the senior membors.
you didnt say how powerful your lase is.
bouncing off things like mirrors and glass they lose quite abit of power.
i think you would know it if you fried your eye.
i hit myself in the eye with a 5mw greenie bouncing off a window.
and it didnt do anything to my eye.
BUT i know i wouldnt want to get hit in the eye with a larger mw.

lightfoot500 said:

well LRMN,
I am a novice at this and dont have the expertise of the senior membors.
you didnt say how powerful your lase is.
bouncing off things like mirrors and glass they lose quite abit of power.
i think you would know it if you fried your eye.
i hit myself in the eye with a 5mw greenie bouncing off a window.
and it didnt do anything to my eye.  
BUT i know i wouldnt want to  get hit in the eye with a larger mw.  

Click to expand...

I only own one laser... *looks at sig*

I'm somewhat worried that there may be a blind spot-it's on the edge of my vision, so I'm not really able to tell. This would effect my peripheral vision. I can't tell if anything is affected at this point, but it's nothing too serious. (At least it's not in the center of my vision, if at all)

LRMNmeyer said:

[quote author=lightfoot500 link=1225240665/60#77 date=1228423867]well LRMN,
I am a novice at this and dont have the expertise of the senior membors.
you didnt say how powerful your lase is.
bouncing off things like mirrors and glass they lose quite abit of power.
i think you would know it if you fried your eye.
i hit myself in the eye with a 5mw greenie bouncing off a window.
and it didnt do anything to my eye.  
BUT i know i wouldnt want to  get hit in the eye with a larger mw.  

Click to expand...

I only own one laser... *looks at sig*

I'm somewhat worried that there may be a blind spot-it's on the edge of my vision, so I'm not really able to tell. This would effect my peripheral vision. I can't tell if anything is affected at this point, but it's nothing too serious. (At least it's not in the center of my vision, if at all)[/quote]

Well, a 5mW off a window would equate to 0.5mW. Not dangerous at all. A 100mW off a mirror would equate to about 90mW. QUITE A BIT more powerful than 0.5mW.

-Mark

Has anyone seen this video?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUpmLbkzyEI&fmt=18

Gives an idea what it looks like from a helicopter. I'm sure that's just a small 5mW pointer.