Re: sell me your used yobresal laser ?
A more powerful beam is easier to see at night and for a much longer distance. The fact that a beam is capable of burning can almost be thought of as a "side effect" of the power of the beam. Dealing with the visible spectrum (non IR or UV), you can see a 50mW or even a 5mW beam at night. Will it be very bright? No. Will you be able to see it over a long distance? No, not real well.
With the 1WATT beam, as being sold in this thread, you'll be able to see it, no question. In fact you can even see it the daytime (see previous pics). Now, whether or not you ever want to burn with it is up to you, but it's not a requirement of having a powerful beam.
The fact that you can see it at all during the day means it will be quite notable at night!
I had a 300mw green Hercules with a collimator lens on front and I would mount it on a tripod and point it down low towards the horizon towards where my dad lived.
From previous phone conversations I knew exactly where to point it to beam over his house about 5 miles away.
At that distance the beam was still visible even though it looked to be about 30 feet in diameter as it sailed overhead.
Quite impressive driving along and seeing the beam out the window of the car!
I was surprised to see how low I had to aim it to still be visible at that distance as any higher it was disappear.
I don't recommend pointing a beam higher than flat over the treetops and leaving it anyway because of possible aircraft that could happen by and cross the beam.... and rare a possibility as that is.. I'm sure it would get reported since they could see the point of origin as to where its coming from.
Because of being visible... you won't be able to get away with too many attention getting tricks since everyone can quickly see where the source is!
A beam that was invisible and became visible and bright once it hit an object would be much easier to drive someone crazy as they would never be able to figure out where its coming from.
I have little experience with the blue yet but have ordered two.
I have seen what my 130mw greenie looks like next to a 300mw blue and the blue is more spectacular at those powers even though green is easier to see with a given wattage.
Here is a video to demonstrate the differences.
I don't know what power the red was.. but the camera didn't pick it up well..
I had to crank the color saturation on my phone camera to even get these... they were " much" more pronounced in real life... probably fourfold as much...
YouTube - DFW get together. 3 lasers red blue green
