"Cockpit Colin" wrote:

For what it's worth, I own one of the green variety - it's great for
pointing out starts etc at night.

My feeling is that if someone shined in the cockpit from (at least) 1 or 2
miles away, ...

(a) It would give me a bit of a fright - be damned annoying, but not
damaging - possibly causing a precautionary go-around at worst.

(b) Being that the beam is visable, it should be possible to give a
pretty accurate description of where it came from.

(c) Unless you mounted it mechanically, it would be pretty hard to keep
it shining in a cockpit.

Given the current talk on the topic I'm tempted to setup a controlled test
(with an additional safety pilot) where I'll get someone to shine it at me
(perhaps from the tower) during an approach in a GA aircraft.

Regardless of what that web page said, or of your feelings
outlined above, I still put shining a laser, or for that matter
any other light source, at an aircraft - cockpit or not - in the
same category as shooting a rifle at an aircraft.

Sure, the probability of either bringing down the aircraft [or
even hitting it for that matter] is low. But mishap after mishap
report has identified the mishap as a chain of low probability
events and omissions that combined to render the mishap
inevitable. There is no way of some yahoo having fun pointing
his laser or rifle at an aircraft knowing whether or not the
aircraft is in the midst of such a chain, and that the momentary
distraction of a laser flash in a pilot's eye, or a round ripping
through a cockpit window might be the final event in the chain
that terminates the flight in a smoking pile of wreckage.

For verisimilitude, why don't you try that flight as an engine
out landing, with an electrical failure on a NORDO approach.
That might give us a better idea of whether or not a laser flash
can be distracting.
--
OJ III
[Email to Yahoo address may be burned before reading.
Lower and crunch the sig and you'll net me at comcast.]