Life Flight Helicopter gets lased!

[00Giorge]

This was in todays paper and is about 4 miles from me. This is just making things worse when these idiots do this crap!

USU police look into report of laser shining into Life Flight cockpit - The Herald Journal: News: helicopter, utah state university, usu police, dee glen smith spectrum, federal aviation administration

 

[Toaster]

Trying to save lives and some dipshit tries to blind you. Makes Sense

 

[00Giorge]

Yea they are not happy about it. My neighbor works for the county and came over and talked about it. He wants to talk to me a little bit more about it since he nows that I have lasers. Kinda has me wondering what he wants since he is also part of Dept. Homeland Security.

 

[Benm]

So did they manage to find the person responsible?

Sometimes i wonder if these things are accidental... but unfortunately that doesnt seem very likely in cases like these.

 

[532 with Envy]

Yea they are not happy about it. My neighbor works for the county and came over and talked about it. He wants to talk to me a little bit more about it since he nows that I have lasers. Kinda has me wondering what he wants since he is also part of Dept. Homeland Security.

This might be an opportunity here to try explaining that there are Many people in the U.S.A. that are safe, home experimenters that should be considered when laws are drafted.
The casual experimenter can create extra-ordinary things...but only when the supplies are available. I know that the home chemist has been hit hard by such "homeland""security" laws.
Allowing 'lightly' controlled supply and very heavy fines for infractions would solve some problems and still allow innovation.
Just my thoughts...
Good luck with your neighbor

 

[00Giorge]

So did they manage to find the person responsible?

Sometimes i wonder if these things are accidental... but unfortunately that doesnt seem very likely in cases like these.

No, they never figured out who did it snce it came from the college campus. But they are watching and waiting for someone to flash a green laser and hopefully a witness.

This might be an opportunity here to try explaining that there are Many people in the U.S.A. that are safe, home experimenters that should be considered when laws are drafted.
The casual experimenter can create extra-ordinary things...but only when the supplies are available. I know that the home chemist has been hit hard by such "homeland""security" laws.
Allowing 'lightly' controlled supply and very heavy fines for infractions would solve some problems and still allow innovation.
Just my thoughts...
Good luck with your neighbor

My neighor is a really nice guy, I just think he wants some more information on lasers. He has seen my 445 and he got the "wow" factor and knows that I am careful on where I shine it. I will post what he wants as soon as I find out which should be as soon as I go out and clean the snow off of the drive and side walk, already got 4" this morning and still snowing on top of the foot that we already have.

 

[Benm]

I'm not for pushing extra legislation, not only because i dislike it, but also because it is not effective.

It is like banning perfectly innocent chemicals that could be combined to build a bomb. Lawmakers should ask themselvers if someone that plans to bomb a building would actually care about being charged with illegally obtaining some chemical substance.

The vast majority of laser experimenters have no intention of harming anyone, let alone downing aircraft. Lawmakers should understand that a laser is an extremely ineffective tool when you want to shoot a plane from the sky. Throwing a monkey wrench at an engine from the end of the runway would probably have a bigger rate of succes.

Also, afaik there has never been an aircrash that was the result of laser irradiation - accidental or intentional.

The only proper response is education: people should be made to understand that while it is fun to point out aircraft in the sky with a laser pointer, doing so also causes problems for the pilots of those craft, resulting in potential disaster. Somehow i think that 99% of people pointing lasers at aircraft would refrain from doing so if they were only aware of the risks.

 

[00Giorge]

Here is the latest after talking with my neighbor, all that they know is that it was a college student but no ideas who did it. He didn't want to talk to me about lasers, he wanted to know if I could fix his snow blower and how powerful my lasers were.

 

[Benm]

I guess you should not volunteer that information...

Afaic i have class 4 lasers, and that is noones business unless i point them at something i should not (by law).

 

[00Giorge]

He has no idea what the difference is between 5mw and 30mw. I just got home from work and my neighbor and a detective that lives around the corner came over and talked to me. They wanted to see my green ebay laser, I showed it to them and the beam is visible but not bright. He said the one that hit the helicopter had a very visible beam and was a lot brighter than mine according to witness statements. They also looked at my 445 and asked how powerful it was and I told them I had no idea.
They thought it was cool and had no problems with me having and wanted to know where I got it. I told them I bought it off of Craigs list along with the other ones that I have.

The detective stated that he had no problems with people having lasers as long as they didn't abuse the privilege and that they are looking for a college student with a powerful green laser. They figure if he got away with it once he might try something again and they are waiting and that there are some witnesses.

I know both guys and they are both very nice, but I still don't trust the police or the Dept of Homeland security. I couldn't say that I didn't have any lasers since all of my neighbors have seen me out playing at night.