Unauthorized Laser Illumination Event

"Marco Leon" writes:
"Gatt" wrote in message
...


Possibly. On the other hand, there just might be an annoying teenager in
the neighborhood who has been harassing neighbors, traffic, pets, etc.
The thing with laser-geeks is they can't seem to control themselves.
And, who knows...maybe one of those neighbors is also a pilot.

And Marco marked the area with a GPS. I'm not sure I would have.

Can't hurt.

I was wondering on the chances of finding the guy as well but after doing a
search on the term "laser" on the FBI website, they seem to be able to find
at least a few of them. Some cases were laughable (i.e. the gut who painted
a police helicopter equipped with night vision) and others did not seem as
easy to catch. But catch they did.

I once got a warning about a laser event as I was flying over San
Jose. They apparently sent out a police helicopter and a police
Cessna to the area to try and "draw fire" so they could locate the
guy.

Chris

On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 16:24:02 GMT, Judah wrote:

"Marco Leon" wrote in
m:

I filled out the form on AC 70-2 and faxed it in. I was thinking about
notifying the aviation dept of Hartford's local PD since they would be
both familiar with the area and in the best position to catch the
*******. Thoughts?

What altitude where you at?

I would bet that a kid with a handheld laser pointer might be very difficult
to catch and prosecute, and I bet even a handheld laser pointer will create a
flash in your eye at 2000 feet, even if the beam has diffused enough that the
"operator" won't be able to tell for sure where it's hitting your plane...

In astronomy we use the little red pointers (low power) and they form
a line you can follow for a long way when pointing out deep sky
objects even when the air appears to be very clear. As for bright? I
can easily see the spot of light on a house over 500 feet away and the
house isn't even white. You can briefly lose the night vision in an
eye even from a momentary reflection from the little low powered ones.
Imagine what it'd be like to be "flashed" by one of the higher
intensity ones.

Roger (K8RI)


I just hope that the noise grumblers don't get the same idea...

Christopher Brian Colohan wrote:

I once got a warning about a laser event as I was flying over San
Jose. They apparently sent out a police helicopter and a police
Cessna to the area to try and "draw fire" so they could locate the
guy.

The airport where Marco got lit up is home base for a State Police heli.