Brian Reay wrote:


"Plod's Conscience" wrote

Played with it last night.

Perhaps he and Nedlar could get together; Nedlar didn't seem to have
much to do last night either.

Powered as it is by AAA cells, it seems to have
a greater power, and a greater reserve of power, than
those laserpointers powered by watch batteries.

Given the relative size of AAA and "watch batteries", this is hardly
surprising.

Well, quite.

The shortest Google search would have turned up the information needed
to avoid him making such an obvious statement. A CR2032 battery has a
capacity of 220 mAh at a current drain of 0.2 m/A.A modern AAA battery
far exceeds that - I've left it as an exercise for the OP to search
for that info..

Allowing for the lens that is used to produce the
straight line beam, the spot from the end was
easily picked out on a gravestone 1/4 mile away,
thus suggesting that a tight beam is being produced.

A 'tight beam' would indicate a spot not much larger than the laser
source. Unfortunately, the lack of *any* objective statement in the
above gives no indication that the beam was 'tight', merely that it
reached it's target.

Laser's are coherent sources, the "ASER" stands for Amplification by
Stimulated Emission of Radiation- the crucial phenomena in the operation of
lasers and masers. The emitted photon is in phase with the stimulating
photon.

As these beasties come in a mounting that already
has facilities for screw fixing, perhaps there is
potential capability for optical communications?

Been done. UK record, as of a couple of years back at least, was something
like 75km. There is project in the latest RSGB handbook (if you are
interesed I'll look up the page, I noticed the article but haven't read the
detail).

Nothing new there with Gareth reinventing the wheel; it's very similar
(perhaps part of the same syndrome?) to his continually re-writing
history in his own vein.

from
Aero Spike