Fox: Commercial Pilots 'attacked' with laser

Fox News | Greta Van Susteren

[ableChair]

Greta Van Susteren reported that a Delta pilot enroute to Salt Lake City was lazed in the cockpit this last Wednesday. Only country I know that has that hardware (for lazing bomber pilots) was the Soviet Union. Pilot reportedly required medical treatment and this was not a minor injury (weak laser) wound. More will come out to tomorrow as this story hits the print press.

[ableChair]

I'm done.


I accept my failure to communicate.

Good show, lad! Hint: when reading English read it veeerrryyy carefully as it isn't what it may appear on the surface. The distinction Cambridge was making was totally over you'ze guy'zes heads.

[blackdog]

The concord had the dropping nose to see while taxiing. Sure, it was a bonus on final, giving them a little help spotting a 15,000 foot runway(that's more than a pair of miles you know!), but the real need to see outside of a commercial jet is for taxiing. Do you know how embarassing it is when you get a set of wheels stuck in the mud? It does not go in your work record too warmly. Nothing gets stuck deeper and quicker than an airplane. I've sunk up to the wing in two minutes while trying to power myself out. Don't even bother trying. Just wait for a ground crew and tug.

[ableChair]

The "other guy" is determined to believe that 95% of the sun's radiant energy doesn't make it to the ground

Ahhh, you're flailing again. Let's see if you see any difference in the meaning of these two sentences:

1.) "95% of the sun's radiant energy doesn't make it to the ground".

2.) 95% of the suns energy does not reach the Earth's surface in radiative form.

Like I said, you're flailing.

Do you see the difference? Statement 2 is the form we want for the laser discussion, not form 1. Think about it.

[ableChair]

Maybe after a nights sleep ableChair will have had a chance to think over what so many posters have been trying to explain to him and hopefully it will sink in. But other than that, I don't know what else to offer. I feel like I've been beating my head against a brick wall!

That's funny. Millions once believed witches could float. Didn't make it true any more than a bunch of posters on FR defending their intellectual ego makes something true.

[ableChair]

Wow, that was torturous. You should join the Kerry campaign.

[blackdog]

The main reason for doing a visual approach is to make the first high speed turnoff and make the tower happy.

One suggestion for anyone flying and worried about hijacking.....Fly at night and in the lousiest weather conditions possible. The more crud the better. If you can't see anything, depending entirely on naviagation technologies, hijackers can't find anything to crash into of high value. And from my experience, Middle East pilots couldn't find Newark on the night of a full moon without being given vectors to final, so take comfort in the bad weather. Also lasers ain't much good in the fog, rain, snow, or other crud.

[ableChair]

For a laser, a simple formula to find the ratio of power at distance "R" to power at distance "0" is e-(alpha)R. alpha is an attenuation factor, and for air ranges from 0.1 (.43 dB/km) for clear air to 1.0 (4.3 dB/km) in hazy air.

Ding, ding, ding, ding. We have a winner! If that equation is even reasonably correct my points are mathematically manifest. Do you understand what that equation is saying? It means that as R grows the attenuation grows exponentially. D$%n that was easy. But, um, why would the attenuation factor be measured in decibels? Are you sure this isn't an equation for some kind of sound propagation? Guys, the more you try to make your 'point' the more you bury your own arguments.

[Dan Evans]

You can also do blind departures(wearing a special hood that only lets you see the panel) and actually depart/takeoff and fly the published or assigned SID, and as you are on takeoff roll and departure, you never deviate a few feet from the runway centerline.

Maybe we should just paint the cockpit windows black until we figure out this laser thing.

Pilots do have to watch for traffic though, don't they? I mean when weather gets bad an airport schedule is screwed up. I assume that's because the FAA increases minimum spacing requirements in bad visibility.

[ableChair]

Dude, you are a RIOT! Your units are all screwed up. Ask anybody who's taken basic algebra. This is an exponential function with a range on the interval [0, 1]. Try the units again, you'll find the attenuation WAY more than what you're expecting here. LMAO!!!!

[ableChair]

How large would a device like this be? Especially if it had the ability to target a pilot in an aircraft?

Glad you asked. That's basically what I'm trying to find out but I can't get past some knuckleheaded posts that insist that lasers are miracle devices that never attenuate. My suspicion was that it would have to have been large...or, put another way, it would rely on a fairly large energy store.

[ableChair]

Well, um, that was kinda the point. It was cryptic because all you said was "this is what I was looking for". Nothing else, just that's what you were looking for. Just thought it a tad odd tis all.

[ableChair]

You may be right. Hadn't thought of that. That suggests a potentially great distance between shooter and shot.

[ableChair]

This could be some type of industrial laser, stripped of it's safety equipment and with sights mounted

What kind of hardware would that entail. What kind of power supply would an 'industrial' laser use? Just wondering what kind of energy we're looking at there.

[blackdog]

Bad weather usually brings five mile separation. Two mile is customary on clear days, nights. Depending on the STAR's and SID's, the departures are usually less than two miles. Some very large wake turbulance planes call for a five mile separation also. 757's tend to really cause some wicked wake turbulance, with one wing vortex parking itself and not dispersing. 757's enjoy a five mile at all times.

[dljordan]

Lasers are avialable for many applications and you can even build them yourself. The handheld green ones are particularly good at flashing spy cameras.

[ableChair]

I've taken gobs of higher math".

Call the bluff time!!!!!!!!

So, ummm, here's an easy one that any intro student should get right away. What's the integral of x exp 2?

[Cboldt]

... why would the attenuation factor be measured in decibels?

It's one of several customary ways to express phenomena that have logarithmic properties. Sound pressure and sound power being two, and electromagnetic phenomena being another.

[ableChair]

Well, that reveals my lack of engineering knowledge! So, the equation is valid. That means that attenuation is indeed exponential. I think this rests the case. We're not going to argue basic math now...are we? :-)

[DB]

That was my point to the original poster I was responding to...

[Dan Evans]

But, um, why would the attenuation factor be measured in decibels? Are you sure this isn't an equation for some kind of sound propagation?

Every time you post, we get a clearer picture of your knowledge level. The term "decibel" is not restricted to measuring sound levels and is often used for electrical, radio and optical power.

Decibel: 1. A dimensionless measure of the ratio of two powers, equal to 10 times the logarithm to the base 10 of the ratio of two powers P1/P2.

It means that as R grows the attenuation grows exponentially

Yes and you can use that formula to calculate the amount of attenuation. It isn't much at all in clear air. He used an attenuation coefficient between clear air and haze just to be fair. He calculated that a laser beam would be attenuated to 40% of it's original strength over five miles.