A few years ago I was flying a "dark blue and yellow" heli, returning from a shout, well after midnight. The observers were scanning the area with the IR camera when they spotted a group of people a few miles ahead, walking with dogs in a line across the fields. They were obviously out "lamping".
It was quite a remote area and there was no ground unit available to respond so knew we weren't able to make any arrests. However, we decided to give them something to think about. Our aircraft suffered a "temporary nav light failure" and I maintained three thousand feet until we were on top of them. We simultaneously switched on the nightsun, while I began a rapid spiral descent, making lots of blade slap. The lampers didn't know which way to run! They were caught in the beam of light (30 million candlepower) just like the animals they were trying to shoot. Dogs began to scatter and shotguns were being thrown away into ditches and bushes. Yee ha!
I levelled off at a thousand feet, the nav lights suddenly "unfailed" themselves and we just flew away back to base, all of us laughing like drains.
