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2004-12-30 Home Front: WoT

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Posted by Steve 2004-12-30 9:13:07 AM|| || Front Page|| [9 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 A snippet apparently from this article was in the paper this morning:

"It was in there for several seconds like it was being tracked," FBI special agent Robert Hawk said... The episode in Cleveland had to involve a fairly sophisticated laser and a system that could track the airplane as it traveled 300 mph at 8,500 to 10,000 feet, Hawk said.

Santa probably didn't leave the kids a tracking device.

Although it doesn't say it here, a similar incident in Colorado involved a green laser, or at least a green light.

Posted by Angie Schultz 2004-12-30 10:26:00 AM|| [http://darkblogules.blogspot.com] 2004-12-30 10:26:00 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 From the Cleveland Plain Dealer: Agents say the green laser came from a Warrensville Heights neighborhood near Randall Park Mall as the plane traveled 300 mph at 8,500 to 10,000 feet. Pilots were not affected. The plane landed safely. The FBI refused to name the airline. But The Plain Dealer learned it was a Continental Airlines flight. A Continental representative referred calls to the FBI.

All the laser pointers and construction laser levels I've seen use red lasers. Same with laser gunsites.

Posted by Steve 2004-12-30 11:03:36 AM|| 2004-12-30 11:03:36 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 No one says too much on this topic, other than who, what , where and why? Trying to find the source. Said to be punsihable up to 5 year's in prison - felony.

ANdrea

Posted by ANdrea 2004-12-30 11:52:28 AM|| 2004-12-30 11:52:28 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 Through the power of Google, I have discovered this company and this one which sell green lasers. From the former site:

By law, a Class IIIa laser must be less than 5mW in power. While many retailers sell lasers listed as 5mW, most are significantly weaker... Jasper is guaranteed to be greater than 3.5mW in power, with most units registering well above 4.5mW.

From the latter site: Well suited for lab experiments; professional lectures; fun & games at night clubs... Yes, it might be fun to conduct a laser lab experiment at a night club, though you may risk getting a professional lecture from the law.

The Jasper site has a photo gallery of people shooting their lasers into the sky.

Posted by Angie Schultz 2004-12-30 12:17:28 PM|| [http://darkblogules.blogspot.com] 2004-12-30 12:17:28 PM|| Front Page Top

#5 How far can a 3.5mW laser go before all the stuff in the atmosphere dissipates the beam? It seem to me it would be nearly impossible to point a laser pointer at an airplane traveling 300+ mph and be able to hit and track the cockpit without a computer controlled aiming device. Just my .02.

Posted by Deacon Blues 2004-12-30 12:30:44 PM|| 2004-12-30 12:30:44 PM|| Front Page Top

#6 Via memepool recently, a green 100 mW laser with enough oomph to burn thru a plastic cup:

The color ( wavelength ) of a laser depends on the lasing material. Common cheap semiconductor lasers are red, CO2 lasers are infrared and colorless. Chemical x-ray lasers have been built for shooting down missles.

Warning: Do NOT stare at laser with remaining good eye

Posted by SteveS 2004-12-30 3:05:56 PM|| 2004-12-30 3:05:56 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 Deacon... Not hard a laser taped to the side of a telescope and on a tripod will follow near anything you can aim at. Just be sure to have a filter for your laser color on the scope.

Posted by 3dc 2004-12-30 4:31:10 PM|| 2004-12-30 4:31:10 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 SteveS? Is that you Hose?

Posted by Shipman 2004-12-30 7:42:31 PM|| 2004-12-30 7:42:31 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 All the laser pointers and construction laser levels I've seen use red lasers. Same with laser gunsites.

Low frequency red (and infra red light) is the easiest to generate using solid state diode lasers. While there are green diode lasers, these are much more rare and costly. The most common green laser is the argon gas laser, like the 20 mW tube that I own.

Almost all laser pointers are 5 mW or less, just like the first HeNe gas laser I got back in 1978. Any laser being used to illuminate these aircraft has to be in the +100 mW power range. This is quite serious. I accidently took an eye-hit from my 20 mW argon beam and was dazzled (in that eye) for more than an hour.

While beams powerful enough to be noticed within a cockpit do not have sufficient power to damage the plane's physical structure, they could conceivably blind the pilot. Doing so in both eyes is next to impossible, but the resulting confusion could still distract the flight deck enough to endanger a craft, especially during an approach.

Anyone who owns a +100 mW laser knows very well just how dangerous it is. These acts are malicious and quite possibly terrorist in nature.

How far can a 3.5mW laser go before all the stuff in the atmosphere dissipates the beam? It seem to me it would be nearly impossible to point a laser pointer at an airplane traveling 300+ mph and be able to hit and track the cockpit without a computer controlled aiming device.

As I was mentioning above, not very far. I brought my 20 mW argon laser to an auditorium to test its "beam throw" and it was not useful for entertainment purposes. Visible (smoke intercept) beams threw all of 10-20 feet. Whoever is doing this has access to entertainment or scientific grade lasers of around 10 - 100 Watts worth of power. Industrial machining lasers go into the 5 - 10 KILOWATT range.

Not hard a laser taped to the side of a telescope and on a tripod will follow near anything you can aim at.

But only if you have performed meticulous coaxial registration of the laser head and the telescope's tube. And extremely competent gunsmith might be able to do this, but it is beyond the scope of an amateur.

These incidents are no sort of joke or prank. Whoever is doing this has bad intentions. Sadly, it is incredibly difficult to detect the souce point of a laser beam if you are off-axis by even so much as a degree or two. I've written about this before at Rantburg and fast acting LCD laser "shutters" could be installed in cockpit windows, but only at gigantic expense. Any sort of fuselage mounted detector capable of correlating the vehicle's GPS coordinates with a laser beam's angle of incidence would be insanely exspensive to put on all craft and still intercept only 1% of all strikes.

This is not a simple problem. Fortunately the odds of a craft being brought down by this method are very low. The most obvious method would be to use a high-power CO2 machining laser. It's IR wavelength would necessitate a visible wavelength sighting laser to aim it and relative close target proximity to inflict debilitating damage to the target aircraft.

Anyone caught doing that sort of thing should be charge with the attempted murder of those in the aircraft and everyone on the ground below it. These current incidents should be linked to major prison sentences, as no teenager has easy access to the needed equipment. These are most definitely adults attempting to interfere with the safe operation of an aircraft in flight.

Posted by Zenster 2004-12-30 11:50:35 PM|| 2004-12-30 11:50:35 PM|| Front Page Top

23:57 Bomb-a-rama
23:50 Zenster
23:50 WingedAvenger
23:46 WingedAvenger
23:42 lex
23:40 lex
23:39 WingedAvenger
23:39 Bomb-a-rama
23:35 Poison Reverse
23:34 lex
23:32 lex
23:31 Sherry
23:31 WingedAvenger
23:29 lex
23:27 WingedAvenger
23:27 lex
23:23 Capt America
23:22 Poison Reverse
23:20 Sock Puppet of Doom
23:19 lex
23:17 lex
23:16 WingedAvenger
23:10 WingedAvenger
23:09 Capt America