Well this is different

Total bullshit beyond belief, I just saw one of those today coming home from doing laundry late this afternoon after it was dark, I know the couple that has it, they are close by. There is no way one of these could illuminate the cockpit of any aircraft. It doesn't have much range, it can't be too far from the house or building or the light won't be bright enough, it does look nice though, if positioned right it will look like real Christmas lights and use less power.

Alan

Yeah, the power of those things is a few tens of mW at best, AND it's divided between hundreds of beams. Although I wouldn't point one in the direction of an airport just out of principle, it's still totally harmless.

That's yahoo news for you, I guess.

Cyparagon said:

Yeah, the power of those things is a few tens of mW at best, AND it's divided between hundreds of beams. Although I wouldn't point one in the direction of an airport just out of principle, it's still totally harmless.

That's yahoo news for you, I guess.

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Great more fear mongering about lasers being magical plane interrupting devices even when they're spread out. Cant wait for man "arrested for using a IR thermometer and having the 1mw laser on" and hit a low flying plane by accident

In this case I think a hid spotlight with a green lens on it would be a bigger issue.

They are going way too far, I saw the same thing, well on the news channel, the FAA warns about these being a hazard to pilots.

Apparently the FAA is not in possession of a calculator, even if you pointed them into the sky a passing airplane's pilot is at zero risk.

Maybe they don't want people pointing them up so police helicopters and drones can scan the ground without distraction while loitering in one spot.

RedCowboy said:

They are going way too far, I saw the same thing, well on the news channel, the FAA warns about these being a hazard to pilots.

Apparently the FAA is not in possession of a calculator, even if you pointed them into the sky a passing airplane's pilot is at zero risk.

Maybe they don't want people pointing them up so police helicopters and drones can scan the ground without distraction while loitering in one spot.

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yet I can buy plane landing lights up to 500 watts cheap. buy 4 and shine it at a plane landing.

They have tight as heck focus tell me thats not a hazard

This is getting a bit crazy indeed. Some buildings use facade lighting that puts out a lot more W/m2 of light, and quite a bit if that goes straight into the air as a buildings facade is rarely the same shape of a light fixtures output pattern.

The only difference would be that the light is colored and perhaps changing, but it's definitely not dangerous to eyesight. Then again with LED lighting becoming more affordable plenty of buildings use color-changing facade lights as well.

What is need here is a simple exposure limit. I'm not sure what that limit should be exactly, but say it was something like 10 or even 100 mW/m2 on the aircraft. With such a limit you can test and verify that -any- lihghting systems doesnt surpass that quite easily, no matter what the light source is.

Lasers aren't an inherit problem here, light exposure is. It really doesn't matter how a photon was produced, only what impact it has once it arrives

Maybe the owners modified it with higher power lasers. If they did that then it could happen. Do we know anyone from Sacramento here?

Even that seems unlikely - even if you put a watt of 445 in there, how bright could it be in the fair field with those gratings in between?

I live near Sacramento now. Haven't heard anything about this though.

Radio shack sells much small indoor only ones they have red green and even a singlemode 450



they were out of the blue but they said its brighter than the red. maybe i'll buy one