What I'm presenting I want to do isn't everything I'm considering, I like the idea of being able to flash from one mountain top to another with these, when using cameras but at great distances it is difficult to put a spot on someone in the far distance, especially if infrared! What I was planning was using a plano convex cylinder lens in front of the output a few inches out to let the high divergence beam from that lens spread some before turning it into a line, then the line is swept up and down in the general direction of someone in the distance, they should see flashes at the high pulse power and repetition rate these units produce and no worry about getting the spot right on them as it will have a large lateral pattern, although weaker due to the horizontal spreading, of course, but with several of these all shooting into one 8 inch long lens like that, the powers add in the line so it should be bright anyway.
There are a lot of things I'm considering, if I can find a better lens to produce the line so it is limited to just a few degrees wide, instead of the huge 20 degree wide line I'm getting right now, I will go that direction. This is all just play for me, not engineering for a need, so what ever it ends up, is what it ends up being. Mostly, I just like tinkering and this is fun. If I could find a high power pulse single mode, I'd use that. The reason why I've moved to IR is due to not wanting to flash aircraft in the far distance, and these high peak power units are far less hazardous close in with their low average power, spread out as I have the beam, it's just a small wisp of average power.