I took a laser zap straight in the right eye once, boy did it hurt for 30 seconds, but as far as I can tell there was no permanent damage.

Fortunately I was not flying but rather riding a push bike in the middle of the day on a newly built freeway that hadn't opened. I pulled up to a gantry and started looking at the overhead sensors that were installed, then I got zapped. I was wearing sunglasses but I don't know if they helped. With the sharp pain that ensued I immediately dropped the bike and walked to the kerbside taking off my glasses and rubbing my right eye with my hand. If I were flying a helicopter I probably would have lost control from the shock and pain rather than being down one good eye. Vision in the affected eye was cloudy but recovered in 30 seconds to about 95%. There was only minor annoying pain in that eye for the rest of the day and all symptoms had disappeared the next day.

This incident was my own fault as I was probably trespassing in the eyes of the law :} (sorry).

Thought I'd share this.

Why does lasered come up with an a yet lasers and laser get the @ symbol?

May I ask a quick question in regards to the protection that is offered to aircrews.
Is there not some sort of safety type glases or a visor that can be fitted to your helmets to prevent or reduce the effects of lazer attacks..?

CRAB: To do with PPruNe's (or Internet Brands) vBulletin forum software options (and which is common among other types of forum software).

For example if you write pprune all in small caps the software will automatically change it to what you have just read. Other 'household' names such as social networking sites beginning with the word 'Face' will be automatically overwritten and somewhere along the line someone somewhere felt that the word laser required a permanent '@' symbol .. but not the word 'lasered'!

All to do with the 'commercial considerations' of the site I suspect and was also the reason why until last year you couldn't post email address although now, thankfully, that has changed.

To prevent Google Ads picking up the word and entertaining you with adverts for the things. I can only suspect that 'lasered' is not in the Google search list. It rightly upset many aviators to have a thread complaining about being zapped surrounded by inappropriate adverts (unless,of course, you install Adblocker) ;)

Other word changes were a victim of Danny's quirky humour: an everlasting irrit is a dig at PPRuNe Towers' love of Land-Rovers which turns the name into Trabant. It has caused pages of posts in most forums debating why a Trabant was used........:p

Excellent:)

Not an aviation thing, but I was lit up by some idiot with one of these devices about three years back from a range of 30 feet while at work. After around 20 minutes, I had a gritty type feeling in one eye and shortly after that, went to the local A&E as the pain increased markedly.

No serious damage done as if turned out and the eye was back to normal the morning after, when the drops had worn off, but it gives me an appreciation of what it can be like to get illuminated. I wouldn't want to be crewing an aircraft and have it happen.

So if I post Trabant, I really mean Landrover

PeterR-B

If you want something that protects you against all type of lasers you would have to wear some kind of welding glass! :cool:

I can't be the only one who'd feel justified in returning a laser beam of my own

Like an AGM114 Hellfire...

I got hit on right base to Battersea recently. Got me in the right eye first go. I just thought I'd been dazzled until just after leaving Battersea I developed something akin to conjunctivitis or "arc eye". It wore off over a period of days.

The Met police took it very seriously as it was just after Jan 16th and I had a full load of pax on board. Forget the courts, just chuck them into a crew room full of angry pilots armed with base ball bats. T***ers.

Burnley in Lancashire seems to be a good place for the Laser boys, always reading about our Eye in the Sky being Zapped, The Bro,s in those parts I am led to believe test them on each other,:E before turning skywards.

Good eh!:D

Peter R-B
sadly too near to that part of Lancashire, perhaps we could offer it to the Yorkists......?

Land Roover, Land Roaver, Land Rover, Landy lasered laser:bored:

Consider the typical 50mW green (532nm) laser pointer with 1.5 mrad beam divergence:

1.5 mrad at 1 statute mile gives 1609756 mm x tan (.0015/2) x 2 = 2414 mm beam diameter [make certain your calculator is in radians mode]

Power density = (250/2414^2) x .050 W = .000002 W/sq. cm

Maximum Permissible Exposure (MPE) for long term exposure to a 543nm (green) laser beam = .001 W/sq. cm (reference File:IEC60825 MPE W s.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

It may be quite annoying and distracting, but your eyes are safe from damage.

Using the above equations you can figure out where you stand for whatever your favorite worst case laser scenario is.

What it's like to be lasered at night
 

Well aa777888

First - helicopter pilots are often closer
Second - my eyes might be safe from laserdamage, pitty if they burn with me and the crashed aircraft cause I couldn't countinue flying due to so called flashblindnes
Third - power of a Laser is easily modified, lots of videos how to on youtube and more powerful lasers are available too …

Fourth, you can easily buy 500mW+ pens on t'internet.


aa777888, why stick at a mile distance to prove your point?

Laser Range Finding:
At the Moon's surface, the beam is only about 6.5 kilometers (four miles) wide and scientists liken the task of aiming the beam to using a rifle to hit a moving dime 3 kilometers (approximately two miles) away. The reflected light is too weak to be seen with the human eye: out of 100,000,000,000,000,000 photons aimed at the reflector, only one will be received back on Earth every few seconds, even under good conditions.

:rolleyes:

Flying for the Police in one of the most densely populated areas in the world has me being Lasered (mostly green lasers) almost EVERYDAY!!!!

Nothing happens except that it looks cool! Sure a Laser could be dangerous at close range, where the dot of the laser is still small and concentrated, but a the distance a helicopter flies at that DOT is huge and thus it is "diluted", I think those that say that such "attacks" by kids could bring a helicopter down is just plain nonsense.

I know this must make us look like savages, but check out this video of MEXICAN PRESIDENT during the Independence Ceremony . . . . and this was at a much closer range than a flying helicopter. SEE AFTER MINUTE 03+00. You don't see him permanently blinded do you?

No the best comparison really ...

We have no idea of knowing how the green light(s) shown in the video,
compare, in terms of power output, with those that are regularly targetted at aircraft.

It's a floodlit stage so "El Presidente", or whoever's Night Vison won't have kicked in,
and even if temporarily dazzled, there's not much risk of him falling from the balcony and killing himself, those accompanying him, or those directly below !

Oh, and the video is more interesting after 03'00" - from 02'00" to 03'00" is quite boring.

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d1.../Coconutty.jpg

What you fail to mention Blender, is that among the student protesters shining the lasers into President Felipe Calderón's eyes, some were from Amnesty International protesting that he is turning a 'blind eye' to torture!

In history quite a few presidents have been 'shot at' and hit, but not all fatally :ok:

As coconutty says, you do not know the strength of the pens, those used in our 'densely populated area' are labelled in the hundreds of mW category, goodness knows what they actually are! May I suggest the next time you catch someone, ask the court to have the pen released to the unit and have it tested.

Pens in the lower powered category are combatted by the blink reflex, however more powerful pens at the upper end of the spectrum between the visible and IR wavelengths, can't be! How can you so easily tell which is which?

Unless I'm mistaken Blender, you are saying that the chance of getting injured by having a laser fired at the ac is non existent because of the range. Just for info, at 500m (1500'), the dot from a laser pen just fills the 'O' in the word 'Police' on the side of a police helicopter. That 'O' just so happens to be the same size of a human face!

http://www.globalaviationresource.co...u/images/5.jpg


I guess by your judgement, the range of the weapon used should have seen this part of the case thrown out :ugh:

BBC News - Birmingham riots: Four guilty of shooting at police


In past times;
Sometimes I used to miss a fig 12 target at 30m with a pistol;
However, I could usually hit a fig 11 at 600m with an SLR.

Feelin' lucky?

Running the numbers at 0.1 statute miles (528 ft or 176 yards), this works out to 250mW being the maximum eye safe laser power at that range. Conversely it'll be about twice that distance for a 500mW laser. Again this assumes a nominal beam divergence of 1.5mrad, quite a typical number for the average, run of the mill, high power laser pointer.

Yes, if you crash and burn it won't matter that the laser didn't burn your retina to start with. However that was not my point. I do realize it is your point! I did, however, want to clear up some of the bad physics assumptions being put forth in the thread.