At Dinner with Windstrings...

[SenKat]

Okay - so Windstrings and his wife, and me, and my wife are all sitting in the waiting area prior to being seated for dinner here in San Antonio - and he points out a stack of abandoned glasses filled with ice across the room.  Well, I happened to have my Nexus with me, and decided it would be fun to light them up a little bit !  So, I slide it outta my pocket, hold it steady next to my leg, and BAM !  Light up the glasses....okay, this in itself is not really too impressive....but when they lit up, and sparkled something fierce for 1 second or less - it caught the eye of a 16 year old kid seated nearby - who FLIPPED OUT !  he popped up out of his seat looking everywhere, then walked over towards where we were seated, it turns out his Dad was right next to us on the bench !  He is gesuring wildly, telling his Dad what he saw, keeps pointing, and looking at the glasses, I thought I was going to come unglued !  OMG !!! It was hilarious to see his reaction, which of course, I left alone, and just let him wonder....poor kid will need therapy soon for seeing odd lights, I am sure !  So, throughout the whole meal, we kept seeing kids with balloons, and both Windstrings and I kept leaning over the table, saying - closer....closer..... HAHAHAHAHA  We didn't claim any balloon victims that night, but we were laughing like drunk frat brothers over the whole thing !  It was a fun time !

Now, for the disclaimer - nobody was in any danger of losing their retinas or anything - and it was  aless than a second flash - enough to draw attention, and make the poor kid wonder !!!

I am STILL laughing about this !!!!

Both him and I tried while I was driving towards the restaurant, to shine our lasers in the sky as I was approaching, to see if either of us would see the beams for far off - but there were too many trees in the way, and the road twists and turns like nutso, so we were not able to see anyhting, until I was right up on the parking lot, and saw him illuminating the signage out front.  After returning to my house for a bit, we took our toys out front, and shone mutiple units in the sky at once - VERY cool seeing the different beam thickness, brightness, and the multiple lightsabres reaching for the moon ! SHOULDA taken a picture :-[ Good times !  I highly reccomend meeting other forum members if you have the capabilities, he and I hit it off pretty good, I think - and his wife is a hoot, too - JUST like mine !  Both of our better halves "tolerate" our hobbies, although I must say, Windstrings has some pretty neat toys, and now I gotto go get some !!!!  If none of you have seen Tritium light sticks before, they are quite impressive when seen up close, and in person - and yes, they glow on their own, and make you feel like you have a little nuclear reaction going on right in front of you...well, you DO for that part !!  They are cool as hell, I gottttttta get me some of those otys ! AWESOME !  Anyways, moral of the story is, play safe - make friends, share experiences, and have FUN ! (Did I mention safe ?)  I had a blast last night...hope he enjoyed it as much as I did !  Our wives kinda clicked, too - so that is my "permission" to still hang out with him ! hehehehehehe    For any of you that aren't married, you may not understand that, but those that are, will definitely know what I am talking about !  Wow - I am like all over the place on topics here ! OUT !

 

[troyboy]

Wow thats cool that you two know each other in real life and can play around But just wondering was that the first time you met each other?

 

[SenKat]

Wow thats cool that you two know each other in real life and can play around   But just wondering was that the first time you met each other?

Yup ! he lives South and west of Dallas, and was up for a road trip this weekend, so he swung on down ! Super nice guy !

 

[windstrings]

Ha!.... yea that was fun.....

What was amazing is that even though the laser blast was about one second, no ones brain processed fast enough to get over being startled and actualy follow the beam to its origin!...

I even hit it a second time and though the beam was visible, not one noticed we did it!.. and there were people sitting all around us in the waiting area!

I wanted to reinforce our brain therapy a bit more and mess with that kids head some more.... but I couldn't find him after we sat down in that crowded place!...... bummer....

We really need to meet each other when ever we can if its reasonable driving distances...

Its really fun to see other folks equipment, aids and other toys.....

I encourage everyone to put their approximate location in thier profile so others will know if they are in your area.

Senkat was a really nice guy..... my wife was very nervous as I have met folks on forums before that turned out to be less than noble citizens!!!

Anyway..... if any of you guys are in our area... let us know.. it would be fun to do something serious together!!!!!

Like a 7 day cruise out of Galveston!!!!!.... I bet when they turn the lights out after midnight on the cruise ship and you go to to top of the ship and blast out across the jet black night as the black sea meets the midnight black sky.. I bet we could put on quite a laser show every night!!!!

I would be fun to freak out a few schools of fish in the dark too!

Imagine.. a whole week with laser freaks eating like a king and getting into mischeif!!!!!! kewl!!!

Lets do it!

 

[Ragnarok]

Like a 7 day cruise out of Galveston!!!!!.... I bet when they turn the lights out after midnight on the cruise ship and you go to to top of the ship and blast out across the jet black night as the black sea meets the midnight black sky.. I bet we could put on quite a laser show every night!!!!

"To go on this cruise you must show your ticket AND a WORKING laser to get on the ship!" ;D

 

[SenKat]

[quote author=windstrings link=1169997494/0#3 date=1170044637]Like a 7 day cruise out of Galveston!!!!!.... I bet when they turn the lights out after midnight on the cruise ship and you go to to top of the ship and blast out across the jet black night as the black sea meets the midnight black sky.. I bet we could put on quite a laser show every night!!!!

"To go on this cruise you must show your ticket AND a WORKING laser to get on the ship!" ;D


[/quote]

Count me in ! That would make for one hell of a picture at night, too - between Windstrings and I, we have PLENTY of toys - we could put on some SERIOUS "Southern lights" action !

 

[timelord]

[quote author=Ragnarok link=1169997494/0#4 date=1170045237][quote author=windstrings link=1169997494/0#3 date=1170044637]Like a 7 day cruise out of Galveston!!!!!.... I bet when they turn the lights out after midnight on the cruise ship and you go to to top of the ship and blast out across the jet black night as the black sea meets the midnight black sky.. I bet we could put on quite a laser show every night!!!!

"To go on this cruise you must show your ticket AND a WORKING laser to get on the ship!" ;D


[/quote]

Count me in !  That would make for one hell of a picture at night, too - between Windstrings and I, we have PLENTY of toys - we could put on some SERIOUS "Southern lights" action ! [/quote]

Cool but no excuses we want videos of all your toys lighting up the planet LOL ;D

 

[windstrings]

Parts of this post, I copied this from another thread comparing WL with Dragon.. I thought it was important to post here since most of it is applicable to this dicussion....hopeful I don't get nailed for double posting!!!!!!

Some fruit and discovery we tripped upon with our meeting together...........

Any company has tremendous leverage whenever they can hype hype hype their product up and then when you buy it, you have no accurate way to test it unless you spend hundreds of dollars on various test equipment, then you can only go by pictures, that are usually altered with smoke, fog of other aids...... so your kinda in the dark "so to speak.... thinking you have a good product since you don't know what others have?

My so called 130mw laser only tested around 62mw with Senkats new coherant checker, and it won't burn a match at any range to save your soul, but it will pop a balloon at 3 feet.... that sounds exactly what a good strong 62mw should do!!!
"I think I'm selling that BTW to the highest bidder"

Now on the other hand..... he has another laser that shows over 200mw on that same checker and is not as bright as my Dragon that shows 122mw?..... it also makes a smaller dot on the wall, both with naked eyes, or when viewing through glasses and it doesn't burn quite as well..... That tells me that even when owning a coherent laser checker, there is still something missing when measuring performance.

I am measuring "for the sake of argument from the WL people" both by how bright the beam is along with burning power... because when all units in question have the IR filtered, there is a direct coorelation.

I'll tell you another mystery.... my dragon as equal brightness to the 175mw Aries, yet the aries can burn a match at 7 feet, while the dragon only does it at 2 feet...... think the Aries is leaking IR?.... think again.

My Herc measured 440mw on that same meter at times "and" has an obviously brighter beam than all the afore mentioned lasers!, and burns better!.......

So buying one coherent tester is not the all in all answer to testing quality.....

Another thing was funny!!!.... Senkat has two sets of glasses... one is green "to filter red" and one is darker greyish..... yet both of those only filtered IR and not green. He put my glasses on that I got from laserglow "which are orange" and it was funny as he started hitting his on button and trying to blast something nearby as he thought his laser wasn't working!!!!!
With those glasses you cannot see a beam in the air "at all" and the dot on the wall is reduced to a mere pinhead.
This allows very exact beaming without flaring your eyes.
The laserglow glasses took out the green of the laser, yet did not remove "any" of the green from the LED buttons on his laptop!

There will be alot less deception as we can meet and compare notes.

The forums have been a powerful tool to remove deception, yet some have used it to "increase" deception with plants and those to give false reports and advice.

There is nothing like getting together and seeing each other all at once.

We make cool friends and it weeds out alot of foo foo!

 

[SenKat]

There is nothing I can say that you didn't cover ! ;D

 

[timelord]

There is nothing I can say that you didn't cover !  ;D

Yea you can what was the dinner like

 

[SenKat]

Dinner was awesome - NOISY, but awesome ! Mexican food is one of my favs, and Windstrings and his wife ordered the beef Fajitas for two - WOW...enough for FOUR most likely ! LOTS of food, good times....

 

[timelord]

Fantastic i'm a lover of mexican food too yummy i'm feeling hungry now

 

[windstrings]

Another fun thing we did... I put the coherent laser checker on the other side of my laserglow glasses to see what the reading would be after going through the glasses........ ah!.. that was a joke.. even at point blank range, it may as well have been a mirror as "all" of the beam bounced off and hit a nearby wall.... that was too wicked! as you may guess the meter registered nothing as nothing passed!

 

[tatman]

i'm glad to read about your visit here fellas.(saves me time w/ PM) so if i understand what u r saying, even w/ the coherent laser check things r a bit sketchy, right? i wonder if beam diameter would b a variable affecting the results? why would a beam that APPEARS less intense actualy perform better? i also wonder if i shoulda started nuther thread?

 

[windstrings]

Well I'm not an expert on laser checkers.... but the little I've learned from Senkat and on the net, the coherent checks amount of light and there are others that check total energy.

the problem with the coherent is you have to set it on a certain frequency and thats what it registers... if there are nearby frequencies coming in and the laser is not real tight on its frequency, you can miss power in its rating.

I see it like a ham radio that narrows its listening frequency to very narrow to block out crap stations nearby on near frequencies..... the problem is however that it may not pick up "all" the real stations on that channel. A channel takes up 10kc's worth of frequency... a good ham radio can talk on a tiny slice of that channel and block its ears to that same slice. This is a trick they do to cram more converstions into a limited talk space without congestion.

The other word picture I hope you can understand.... remember the CB radios?... some ran extra power and was so dirty that they spattered over several channels, while others with clean amplifiers could put out even more power, but you only heard them on the channel they were broadcasting.

Without knowing what I'm really talking about..... I suppose some lasers are "dirty" in their frequency transmission while others are cleaner?... however the "dirty" ones may actually have more burning cutting power than the clean ones that shows more power at a specific freqency?

Now if IR is leaking.... thats a whole different issue.... now we are dealing with "unregistered" and "invisible" power on a whole different frequency all together......The naked eye cannot see it, nor can a meter thats set to 532nm.

In those instances, you hear of lasers that register high power and even burn well, but have a rather dim beam.... thats because thier burning power is not all encaptured in the "green" spectrum, but also hidden in the IR frequency.
A laser with "no IR filetering" will have about 85% of its power in the invisible IR and only about 15% in the green you can see.
The shoddy laser companies will measure with instruments that show total power "on all frequencies" and then tell you, that you are buying a 200mw laser and in reality you are getting a 30watt green and 170 watt IR laser!

The truely IR filtered lasers would always have much more power if the IR filtering were removed... but then comes the big debate.... "is invisible power dangerous or not?".. I'll let you decide that one!
That why you are getting cheated on price to buy one that is at a competitive price for its rating, but secretly has no IR filter.
Because you could buy the same laser thats IR filtered and take out the filter and have a much more powerful laser!.... but good luck doing it without destroying it...thats not a trick I care to do for several reasons.

I'm sure the "dirty" lasers I spoke about may not have IR being registered as it may be truely filtered, but it may have green that is near to 532nm that our eyes can still pick up and see, but the coherent meter does not, so they show so so power on the meter thats set to a specific frequency, but nevertheless may have great burning power.

Its important that a radio has clean power as our ears can discern the difference, but you don't hear much about "dirty" power in lasers.... only whether is "stable" or not..... some of that is the same..... a good stable laser will be cleaner... but it still can be broadcasting on a wider range of freqency and be stable in power.

Keep in mind, I don't have a clue of what I'm talking about as my disclaimer.... but when me and Senkat changed the frequency on the coherent meter from 532 to 520 and 540 etc.. we still got reasonable power outputs meaning that either the meter is crap, or the laser is truely broadcasting a broad range of freqencies surrounding the 532 range.

My Dragon has a nice bright "almost flourescent" green color, while some others I've seen look almost like a "grey green" next to it.
The Herc and Aries also have that nice flourescent green color.

It really makes a pretty light saber into the night sky!

Other than being pleasing to the eye.. I don't think a specific freqency is critical..... just whether its focused down properly and has a nice divergence.

My much more powerful Herc beam looks bigger than my dragon... but its a deception as the glow of the power radiates the air particles. The Herc quite possibly has a smaller divergence than the dragon.... the Herc is 1.1mrad.... I don't know what the dragon is, but I doubt its much below that... maybe even higher?

Have you noticed how big the dot appears on the wall, until you put good glasses on that filters out all the green splash, then you see the true size of the beam?

A simple test.... without using glasses, hit a white wall with your laser and notice how big the dot looks, now move it to a dark object and notice how the dot goes much smaller?

ON the dark object the energy is being absorbed better and doesn't "splash" back at you so much so the dot appears smaller even t though it has not changed...... sizes of dots and beams are deceptive to the naked eyes.

I hope I answered your question......

 

[tatman]

yes. it does. it IS sketchy! and i'll b gettin glasses!