Originally Posted by
Chesty Morgan
It definitely behaved like a handheld laser.
I didn't really care who was holding it at the time though.
Bringing a bit of maths in myself.
If you were at FL360, let's say that you were impacted at 45° angle below the horizon, as from directly below you wouldn't enter the cockpit. So from surface, that's about 15km in a straight line.
Firstly atmospheric losses would need something rather bigger than the 5mA handheld I use in a lecture theatre. When I've played with it on a clear day, a few km is all that works at.
Secondly, you were flying I'd guess at around M=0.75, that would map to a groundspeed of about 220m/s. Side on then, to track you, that would need some device that moves the laser at a rate of about 0.8 degrees/second. Achievable, but would require some kind of aiming and tracking device - say a rifle sight attached to the laser, mounted on the top of a tripod.
Let's say that the tracking is achievable to a steadyness of ±1%: I suspect that this would actually be pretty good. At the aeroplane, that would map to a back and forth wobble of ±2.2m: or a couple of times the size of an aircraft side window. In practice, it probably wouldn't be that good and probably back and forth nearer the length of the aeroplane is more likely.
My guess then is, that from where you were sat, that would look very like a wobbly handheld device when, in reality, it was incredibly steady.
G