Hard Time For Man Who Fired Laser Pointer At CHP Aircraft

[AaronGant]

Whats the point of this lets hold you down and shine a laser in your eye message? Guy requests web links to information and you offer violence?

The threshold for where lasers are regulated is where they can cause damage in the exposure time presented by normal human reactions. Class 3r is where that hazard begins and that's limited to 5mw. This duche nozzle was at 200 mw. By a strict reading of the law, that could be viewed as assault with a deadly weapon in many states, as that includes the reasonable threat of being maimed or crippled. Yeah, it won't be lights out, but it can fuck up your vision permanently past that threshold. He was WAY past. Depending on the spectrum, it could have been quite dangerous. If you want to doubt that, lets hold you down and break out a 200 mw laser to get some empirical evidence? No?

As for it not blinding people, it's still dangerous. It's bright enough that you WILL have a glare reflex, and that makes it hard to keep proper control of an aircraft. I know a few pilots and it's a real and increasingly frequent issue. That can be a threat to the pilot, passengers, and anyone they fly over. Having had my home missed by a few hundred feet multiple times over the years by having fucktards regularly ignore FAA rules, yeah shit falls out of the sky sometimes when you fuck with the margins. Assholes with laser pointers need to stop fucking with the margins.

 

[nysmo]

Not nearly long enough. It's pretty damn clear he intentionally hit the plane, multiple times. It happening once can be considered an accident. Six fucking times isn't an accident.

Even as a student pilot well aware of the implications of being blinded while trying to land at night, I think 6 months is ok given the offense. Even though the stakes are high, truthfully as a pilot I'm not likely to crash or anything as a result of something like this unless I were trying to land in a blizzard. I feel the guy probably didnt consider the dangers of what he was doing at all and just thought it was funny. Punishment is meant to serve as a deterrent. I'm pretty sure he'll never pull a stunt like this again after spending 6 months in jail. I mean 6 months is a good chunk of time for being an idiot. Think back to what you were doing on New Years, now imagine ever since then you have been behind bars. It aint no picnic, and now this guy can spread the word to his idiot buddies about how much jail sucked and to never fuck around with planes like that again. The only reason asshat's keep doing this is because they almost never get caught.

 

[Dullard]

I did the snow and the fog. Then I realized I didn't know what was beyond the snow and the fog and I didn't know how much farther that beam was going. It's also good for pointing out stars and planets, but again - know what is out there...

It's pretty much dispersed by the snow (or fog), but even then I live so far away from any airport that the only planes would be at cruising altitude. I doubt anyone could hit one or detect being hit at that range even in clear atmosphere. But thanks for your concern, mom.

 

[drakken]

of they just don't want anyone aiming at planes in the skies over head, since lazing a target with a laser pointer also marks it visible to other locations. When I was over in Saudi the running joke was that tac-p escort the army, and the combat controllers teach the marines how to use a laser pointer. Marines having no trouble figuring out where the target it, but much trouble not describing it as a fish this big.......

 

[Ur_Mom]

It's pretty much dispersed by the snow (or fog), but even then I live so far away from any airport that the only planes would be at cruising altitude. I doubt anyone could hit one or detect being hit at that range even in clear atmosphere. But thanks for your concern, mom.

Yea, I didn't want to take a chance with clear skies. Even at cruising altitude. Snow and fog are still ok. Just have fun out there. And grab me some beer and some smokes while you're out... I'll write a note (remember when your mom could write a note to the store and they'd sell a kid cigarettes?).

 

[Azphira]

Jeremy Scott Danielson was just careless, there should have been no charges.

 

[N4CR]

As a pilot with 105 hours and a certified laser safety officer who regularly uses lasers 150x more powerful than that pointer; what Raz-0 said. Basically 200mW even at far distance, at night, can cause major glare or vision loss for up to 10minutes. Try flying a manual plane with instruments/bearings and no autopilot, without seeing for 10 minutes. Good chance you're a dead motherfucker if you're low enough already.
Experiments in the 50s or 60s during war discovered the effects of gyro roll and inner ear perception this way, during take off the gyros would roll and men would kill themselves in flight keeping it 'level' as they had no other bearings (edit: they were taking off into cloud) and their inner ears also lied to them. Imagine now having NO bearings and NO instruments.

Fucking idiot deserves what he gets.

 

[mls1995]

he's a moron who got what he deserved.

 

[w00t69]

And you are assuming that the pilot and any other officers couldn't have been using either night vision or other vision enhancement devices that would have increased the risk of damage?



Read again buddy, the plane wasn't at a distance of 6000' and this laser was rated at a power of 200 milliwatts at a range of 6000' meaning that it is that strong at that distance, not "out of the lens".

Fortunately you can gain so much more information about the specifics when you take the time to look into them.

Gov Uscourts Caed 277230 1 0

I'm sorry you think night vision equipment can result in blindness? They would never design equipment that would damage your eyesight that would be incredibly poor engineering. It could definitely result in night blindness for a bit though. But even regular laser strikes sans night vision equipment would do that.

Oh and what you mentioned. Literally NO ONE that has a laser that produces 200mw at 6000 feet would EVER fire it at a plane unless it was a military weapon. You don't even seem to understand how lasers work with distance. the mathmatical formula was literally in front of your face from the link i provided and you ignored that and assumed

A laser with NOHD at 6000 feet would be 600 watts. Math, it's hard.

this guy is still an ass for laser striking a plane, i would never even think to shine my laser at a plane, he deserves the punishment, but don't sit here saying it's 200mw at 6000 feet. That would melt a hole through a steel plate at a few feet distance and he had that in his pocket?

Actually, a 600 watt laser is a common power level for a metal laser cutting machine. So he had a laser cutter in his pocket?

 

[Litfod]

This sort of shit should be one count of attempted murder for every person on the aircraft. I don't care about the "oh but it's theoretically not strong enough to permanently damage someone's eyesight" bullshit, there's no reason to expect anything less when you're shining a fucking laser at a plane, you don't do it because you think the pilot will find it amusing.

 

[w00t69]

It's not theoretical physics, it's elementary physics. It is a known fact. Don't be a fucking moron. I also didn't apologize for his actions, i merely stated some facts about lasers and the damage range of their beam.

 

[otherweeb]

Let's arm all planes with HARM missiles. It can just ride that beam back to the user. Should only take a few 'incidents' till people get smart.

 

[Grahamkracka]

They would never design equipment that would damage your eyesight that would be incredibly poor engineering. It could definitely result in night blindness for a bit though.

I just wanted to say that defense contractors will not engineer anything into a product unless there is a specific requirement to do so.

1. It costs money.

2. Government agencies hate it when you do anything without their approval, even it's a good idea.

3. You can pitch new requirements (as improvements) all you want, they almost always get shot down unless the agency's requirements dweebs thought of them.

So yea, unless the military specified the output was always safe for vision in the event of a laser getting shined into the NVG...it most likely didn't happen. (Though in this case there was clearly a requirement).

I see this shit all the time since I work for a major defense contractor.

 

[N4CR]

I'm sorry you think night vision equipment can result in blindness? They would never design equipment that would damage your eyesight that would be incredibly poor engineering. It could definitely result in night blindness for a bit though. But even regular laser strikes sans night vision equipment would do that.

A laser with NOHD at 6000 feet would be 600 watts. Math, it's hard.

this guy is still an ass for laser striking a plane, i would never even think to shine my laser at a plane, he deserves the punishment, but don't sit here saying it's 200mw at 6000 feet. That would melt a hole through a steel plate at a few feet distance and he had that in his pocket?

Actually, a 600 watt laser is a common power level for a metal laser cutting machine. So he had a laser cutter in his pocket?

Actually on older night vision goggles without auto gating, flash bangs and other bright sources could overwhelm a soldiers vision, rendering them temporarily blinded, just like a laser or any other super intense light source can. If you walked into a 20k lumen spotlight beam at your face at 5m, you ain't seeing shit for a few minutes. Even smaller lights are very disabling in that manner. Had a sharpie to the face at close range (1m) once, lighting guy set them head height... that really sucked, took hours to fully recover - way over exposure limits. Like a magnifying glass and the sun.


Just for you I did some numbers.

Lets take the green laser from this example - 200mW. That's not a cheapie, that's starting to get pretty serious assuming they measured it. Usually these sort of beams are around 1mm, 0.6mrad, close to diffraction limits often in short pulses before they become thermally saturated.
With good optics, you can use a telescope design, to get a 32mm beam at 0.018mrad or in microradian territory.

Guess what that does to the power density at 6000ft? Makes a beam approximately 8.67cm², giving around 23.1mW/cm². Well over MPE, more than easily able to create wicked, long term worst case style flash blindness and possibly even damage on a direct exposure to the eye. NOHD is 7000*m*+. I've had about 25mW to the eye before off centre - never put your eyes at beam table height you stupid mfr - it's not fun. No noticeable issues, but was there for a little while - maybe just can't see it.


So yeah, you never know what this system was doing or how it was set up. Smaller telescopes could still give a 6000ft NOHD figure as listed without trouble...

 

[Sp33dFr33k]

Should be a longer sentence IMO but it should also not be so damn easy to buy this stuff online. Go after the manufacturers. If they weren't so readily available there may not be so many morons using them.

 

[w00t69]

Actually on older night vision goggles without auto gating, flash bangs and other bright sources could overwhelm a soldiers vision, rendering them temporarily blinded, just like a laser or any other super intense light source can. If you walked into a 20k lumen spotlight beam at your face at 5m, you ain't seeing shit for a few minutes. Even smaller lights are very disabling in that manner. Had a sharpie to the face at close range (1m) once, lighting guy set them head height... that really sucked, took hours to fully recover - way over exposure limits. Like a magnifying glass and the sun.


Just for you I did some numbers.

Lets take the green laser from this example - 200mW. That's not a cheapie, that's starting to get pretty serious assuming they measured it. Usually these sort of beams are around 1mm, 0.6mrad, close to diffraction limits often in short pulses before they become thermally saturated.
With good optics, you can use a telescope design, to get a 32mm beam at 0.018mrad or in microradian territory.

Guess what that does to the power density at 6000ft? Makes a beam approximately 8.67cm², giving around 23.1mW/cm². Well over MPE, more than easily able to create wicked, long term worst case style flash blindness and possibly even damage on a direct exposure to the eye. NOHD is 7000*m*+. I've had about 25mW to the eye before off centre - never put your eyes at beam table height you stupid mfr - it's not fun. No noticeable issues, but was there for a little while - maybe just can't see it.


So yeah, you never know what this system was doing or how it was set up. Smaller telescopes could still give a 6000ft NOHD figure as listed without trouble...

Are you literally telling me that you think the dude had a telescope type optical device connected to his laser, which was in his pocket? he had it in his pocket. You aren't going to put optics able to focus like that in your pocket.

Also you're overestimating. divergence is usually around 1.x mrad and 2-4mm beam.

A 200mw laser is the size of a small maglite. It's serious hardware but it doesn't look it.

 

[N4CR]

Are you literally telling me that you think the dude had a telescope type optical device connected to his laser, which was in his pocket? he had it in his pocket. You aren't going to put optics able to focus like that in your pocket.

Also you're overestimating. divergence is usually around 1.x mrad and 2-4mm beam.

A 200mw laser is the size of a small maglite. It's serious hardware but it doesn't look it.

In 2005 I had a 100mW 532nm literally the size of a pen, that was nearly half a grand of laser pointer back then. You underestimate modern laser technology. There is better stuff out there if you know what you are looking for, that stuff has beams like I stated. Yes, cheap stuff, 1mrad 2mm beam maybe bigger.
I'm overstating it but just giving you some 'what ifs' which you have to consider when doing laser safety and evaluations of this stuff. He could use a 12-16mm scope and still have considerable power up there to flash blind. That is not uncommon with higher end pointers, 200mW is still even today in green, a higher end pointer - DPSS, sometimes pulsed - I have not accounted for that, it makes things even worse.

 

[DrLobotomy]

Just to add fuel to the fire....

https://www.amazon.com/Ourbest-Anti...8&qid=1469041410&sr=8-16&keywords=200mw+laser

 

[Krenum]

he's a moron who got what he deserved.

Yep.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Just to add fuel to the fire....

https://www.amazon.com/Ourbest-Anti...8&qid=1469041410&sr=8-16&keywords=200mw+laser

Looks like one of those non-CDRH approved illegal China imports. There are lots of them on eBay and on Amazon marketplace. I'm amazed FDA hasn't cracked down on them yet.


Using a powerful laser as a fog light seems like an awful irresponsible idea.

 

[Darunion]

Looks like one of those non-CDRH approved illegal China imports. There are lots of them on eBay and on Amazon marketplace. I'm amazed FDA hasn't cracked down on them yet.


Using a powerful laser as a fog light seems like an awful irresponsible idea.

did you read the text on the 2nd to last picture?

"THE HEAVY RAIN FOG GOD HORSES ARE FLOATING CLOUDS"

I lost braincells reading that a few times...

 

[Bowman15]

Looks like one of those non-CDRH approved illegal China imports. There are lots of them on eBay and on Amazon marketplace. I'm amazed FDA hasn't cracked down on them yet.


Using a powerful laser as a fog light seems like an awful irresponsible idea.

That is redneck candy. Attach them to their fuckineh constitutional right AR 15 uber bazooka gun tactical defense weapons.

 

[Deleted member 222586]

6 month sentence is way too short. I can just imagine an A380 going down because both pilots were blinded by laser. That would be awful.

As a pilot I wish it was a worse penalty. The two most dangerous times are when these nozzles are likely to light up the cockpit: takeoff and landing.

Yeah, lets put somebody in jail forever because he acted without thinking straight. I'm sure his intentions were to take the plan down and all that... jeeez no wonder you have so many inmates in the USA. Instead of trying to re-educate people, you simply want to punish them.

 

[Bowman15]

Yeah, lets put somebody in jail forever because he acted without thinking straight. I'm sure his intentions were to take the plan down and all that... jeeez no wonder you have so many inmates in the USA. Instead of trying to re-educate people, you simply want to punish them.

You mean 6 months, probably out in 3 with good behavior, plus work release....yeah no hyperbole there?

 

[Decibel]

I fly helicopters. In a chopper ANYTHING that leads to temporary loss of situational awareness can be very bad, very quickly.

How about we try not shooting lasers at aircraft huh?

 

[MongGrel]

he's a moron who got what he deserved.

Pretty much this IMHO.

It sounds intentional of course, the sitting in the backyard drinking a beer thing sounds about right.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time"

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

did you read the text on the 2nd to last picture?

"THE HEAVY RAIN FOG GOD HORSES ARE FLOATING CLOUDS"

I lost braincells reading that a few times...

I'm trying to randomly insert commas to make that sentence make sense, and I'm not succeeding.

The heavy rain-fog. God, horses are floating clouds?

What?

 

[lcpiper]

I'm sorry you think night vision equipment can result in blindness? They would never design equipment that would damage your eyesight that would be incredibly poor engineering. It could definitely result in night blindness for a bit though. But even regular laser strikes sans night vision equipment would do that.

Oh and what you mentioned. Literally NO ONE that has a laser that produces 200mw at 6000 feet would EVER fire it at a plane unless it was a military weapon. You don't even seem to understand how lasers work with distance. the mathmatical formula was literally in front of your face from the link i provided and you ignored that and assumed

A laser with NOHD at 6000 feet would be 600 watts. Math, it's hard.

this guy is still an ass for laser striking a plane, i would never even think to shine my laser at a plane, he deserves the punishment, but don't sit here saying it's 200mw at 6000 feet. That would melt a hole through a steel plate at a few feet distance and he had that in his pocket?

Actually, a 600 watt laser is a common power level for a metal laser cutting machine. So he had a laser cutter in his pocket?

Don't be sorry, I've used many of them myself.

There are many different types,. Some would be vulnerable / a risk, some not. That FLIR system they used to track back the source of the laser = NOT, Night vision Goggles = Yes if magnifying. Old time Starlight and IR, Yes, Thermal Sights on tanks and anti-armor systems, = Not.

I didn't ignore any formula. I quoted what the article said, I'll quote it again special for you;

The officer found that the laser was marked with "Laser 301," meaning a model capable of firing at 200 milliwatts at a range of 6,000 feet and even setting small objects alight at short-range.

Now since the exact make and model of laser isn't given I can not argue this description of it's capabilities, at least not the way are able to. I will argue this though, it seems the laser was capable enough and the law specific enough, and the risk real enough, that it got this man convicted of a felony offense. I'll let that fact stand in for all the guess made by all the well informed people around. You are trying to claim the laser posed no risk and I am saying that your full of shit. There was just a court fight over the details and the result should say enough.

 

[w00t69]

Actually on older night vision goggles without auto gating, flash bangs and other bright sources could overwhelm a soldiers vision, rendering them temporarily blinded, just like a laser or any other super intense light source can. If you walked into a 20k lumen spotlight beam at your face at 5m, you ain't seeing shit for a few minutes. Even smaller lights are very disabling in that manner. Had a sharpie to the face at close range (1m) once, lighting guy set them head height... that really sucked, took hours to fully recover - way over exposure limits. Like a magnifying glass and the sun.


Just for you I did some numbers.

Lets take the green laser from this example - 200mW. That's not a cheapie, that's starting to get pretty serious assuming they measured it. Usually these sort of beams are around 1mm, 0.6mrad, close to diffraction limits often in short pulses before they become thermally saturated.
With good optics, you can use a telescope design, to get a 32mm beam at 0.018mrad or in microradian territory.

Guess what that does to the power density at 6000ft? Makes a beam approximately 8.67cm², giving around 23.1mW/cm². Well over MPE, more than easily able to create wicked, long term worst case style flash blindness and possibly even damage on a direct exposure to the eye. NOHD is 7000*m*+. I've had about 25mW to the eye before off centre - never put your eyes at beam table height you stupid mfr - it's not fun. No noticeable issues, but was there for a little while - maybe just can't see it.


So yeah, you never know what this system was doing or how it was set up. Smaller telescopes could still give a 6000ft NOHD figure as listed without trouble...

In 2005 I had a 100mW 532nm literally the size of a pen, that was nearly half a grand of laser pointer back then. You underestimate modern laser technology. There is better stuff out there if you know what you are looking for, that stuff has beams like I stated. Yes, cheap stuff, 1mrad 2mm beam maybe bigger.
I'm overstating it but just giving you some 'what ifs' which you have to consider when doing laser safety and evaluations of this stuff. He could use a 12-16mm scope and still have considerable power up there to flash blind. That is not uncommon with higher end pointers, 200mW is still even today in green, a higher end pointer - DPSS, sometimes pulsed - I have not accounted for that, it makes things even worse.

Again, a moron that would laser strike an aircraft, would not own equipment like that. Now a DPSS laser is actually easily attained from wickedlasers, they have 900Mw 532nm DPSS lasers available.

 

[w00t69]

Don't be sorry, I've used many of them myself.

There are many different types,. Some would be vulnerable / a risk, some not. That FLIR system they used to track back the source of the laser = NOT, Night vision Goggles = Yes if magnifying. Old time Starlight and IR, Yes, Thermal Sights on tanks and anti-armor systems, = Not.

I didn't ignore any formula. I quoted what the article said, I'll quote it again special for you;


Now since the exact make and model of laser isn't given I can not argue this description of it's capabilities, at least not the way are able to. I will argue this though, it seems the laser was capable enough and the law specific enough, and the risk real enough, that it got this man convicted of a felony offense. I'll let that fact stand in for all the guess made by all the well informed people around. You are trying to claim the laser posed no risk and I am saying that your full of shit. There was just a court fight over the details and the result should say enough.

I said it would post no permanent risk. It absolutely would pose an immediate risk, which is why i agree with felony charges for laser striking aircraft. That laser is capable of "peak 200Mw" which means it most likely doesn't even put out a continuous 200Mw. That's right out of the aperture, not at 6000 ft. Either way, again, i don't disagree with felony charges, just trying to not let people spread misinformation.

 

[TwistedAegis]

this guy is still an ass for laser striking a plane, i would never even think to shine my laser at a plane, he deserves the punishment, but don't sit here saying it's 200mw at 6000 feet. That would melt a hole through a steel plate at a few feet distance and he had that in his pocket?

Actually, a 600 watt laser is a common power level for a metal laser cutting machine. So he had a laser cutter in his pocket?

This guy absolutely did not have it in his pocket and hit a cockpit six times. Taking his obviously false words at face value means you're discounting what his setup could have been.

 

[MongGrel]

I'm trying to randomly insert commas to make that sentence make sense, and I'm not succeeding.

The heavy rain-fog. God, horses are floating clouds?

What?

There must have been ghost riders in the sky ...

 

[BrainEater]

.... The laser used is capable of firing at 200 milliwatts at a range of 6,000 feet and setting small objects alight at short-range.

There is something wrong with this.
Caveat : I own several lasers.

200 mW is not enough to " set small objects alight at short range" ....my 1 Watt (1000 mW) will barely light a match.

Either the stated power is wrong , or the description is.



edit : just reread a bit....

The lasers that say ' YL-laser 301' are Chinese knockoffs.The stated power is wrong.The one I have is 1 Watt.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

There is something wrong with this.
Caveat : I own several lasers.

200 mW is not enough to " set small objects alight at short range" ....my 1 Watt (1000 mW) will barely light a match.

Either the stated power is wrong , or the description is.



edit : just reread a bit....

The lasers that say ' YL-laser 301' are Chinese knockoffs.The stated power is wrong.The one I have is 1 Watt.

Well, how does the wattage decay with range?

They said it was 200mw at 6000ft, does that mean the power at the source is much higher, like 600mw?

 

[BrainEater]

The original quote was a mashup of the facts.
I think the laser power was stated as the power you see in the ebay ad....When I bought mine it was advertised as 5 mw.
I think the range stated was the height of the airplane at the time.

I've seen 'YL-laser-301's' as high as 3 watts , for 10 bucks.

I'm actually looking to buy a nice 2watt blue one.
-------

Guy should goto jail.....Don't fuckin point lasers at aircraft/people/pets....Despite what current society would say , they are not fucking toys !

 

[Cali3350]

Stupidity deserves to be punished if it puts others in danger. I dont think it should be more than 6 months by any means (Im not even sure he deserves jail time at all, I dont think he does personally) but he clearly deserves some punishment.

 

[iRevert]

Just to put a bit of perspective on what it looks like for a helicopter/plane to have someone shine them, in this case it was a police heli with a camera that recorded and relayed ground units to the guys house and arrested him.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

 

[westrock2000]

But can they prove intent?

Well I think you would have a hard time finding a reasonable prosecuter to take the case. I think is more about extreme carelessness.

 

[Inglix_the_Mad]

Yeah, lets put somebody in jail forever because he acted without thinking straight. I'm sure his intentions were to take the plan down and all that... jeeez no wonder you have so many inmates in the USA. Instead of trying to re-educate people, you simply want to punish them.

I'm late getting back to you on this, apologies.

This is what you don't understand: Anyone that is lasing pilots is flat out committing attempted murder. I don't care if they're not thinking straight, heck I don't care if they don't understand. This is a serious problem, because a blinded pilot is subject to all the physical inner ear illusions. They can easily roll a plane, put it in a nose down attitude, or (in a chopper) end up losing cyclic control. You need, as in absolutely-without-a-fracking-doubt, to be able to see (at least your instruments if IFR rated) to fly. Go listen to some of chilling ATC audio files from ATC.net where a VFR pilot stumbled into conditions where they couldn't see. Now multiply it by not even being able to see your six pack or PFD. This isn't a car where you hit the brakes and get a lot of horn honking, but probably will be okay. If you get a good hit on the cockpit you might be blind for a solid 5-10 minutes, maybe longer. I've never seen anyone hand fly a plane in a full motion simulator at takeoff or landing blindfolded for longer than 2.5 minutes, without crashing it. Most people lose it before the configuration change if there's any wind over 5kts. One guy, who'd been flying for decades, made it to just about wings level, but his inner ear fracked him up and he ended up in a right wing low death spiral at 2:20 after "loss" of vision.

I get someone might just make a mistake. Intent however, as the old phrase adapted goes, follows the laser beam. To put it another way, how would you like a chopper or plane to end up in your house/apartment because someone thought it would be funny to point at an aircraft with a laser? Would you like to be my passenger on takeoff or landing when some hits the Baron with a laser, not forgetting you also will likely suffer temporary blindness? Would you still excuse someone if they only killed 2-8 people on a small plane instead of a commuter jet carrying 80, or a jumbo carrying 300+?

This is just as much about the consequences of the act as the act itself. 6 months is too short for attempted murder...