Originally Posted by Biffer
I am a Police Helicopter Pilot ....
Since in this case they did confiscate the l@zer, can you get any information on the type?
I think there's a huge confusion.
There are l@zer "pens" (Class I, up to 1mW) which are useful during lectures (they replace the old flashlight pointers, which projected a little arrow) or, according to one informed amateur astronomer poster on her, can be used for lining up a telescope. They're about as 'dangerous' as a flash-light (think MagLights), and will just dazzle you momentarily from a few metres away. You probably wouldn't even see them from an aircraft, since the optics aren't that good.
There are the l@sers used on building sites, as mentioned earlier. Apart from the l@zer 'levels' (which project a line), there are others which allow you to get an accurate alignment over a few hundred metres. They're slightly more powerful, but still pretty useless for "lighting up" an aircraft.
Then there's the "big stuff" such as used for laser light shows, etc. There we're talking about something like 30mW to 300mW: look at the eBay item mentioned earlier.
Unfortunately those seem to be readily available, and are used as "toys" by chavs, etc. to put spectacular videos on YouTube of burning through chair legs... and also for these "l@ser attacks" on aircraft.
So,
Biffer, any chance of clarifying this by giving us an idea of what we're really looking at?
And I would bet it's not a l@zer "pen".
CJ