Although I was the first patient in the state of Iowa in October of 1964 to 
have his retinas treated using a laser surgical machine, I never got to see 
an actual laser beam of light itself.  By the way, the laser treatment did 
not work on me because my retinas were shredded, by this point, into tiny 
fragments and the lasers were not narrow beamed enough to tack anything 
down.  I left totally blind on November 13 of 1964, and that was after 13 
operations and procedures before the laser came to the University of Iowa 
hospital.  Anyhow, as my kids grew, laser beam toys became quite popular. 
As I recall, that last time my young son had one was when he was 14 or 15. 
It would display a picture of a bird on a wall from 40 feet away.  Over the 
years, I've heard many reports, and just recently for that matter, of people 
lasering inbound commercial aircraft and blinding, to the point of 
distraction, the pilots.  To accomplish this, there must be a long distance 
way of amplifying a laser beam to reach that far out to an approaching 
plane.  I'm assuming, the more power, the longer the laser beam can reach 
but how much power would it take to reach hundreds of yards out to an 
approaching aircraft?  I wouldn't think lasers of that type would be 
available on the open market but I haven't done that much reading about such 
a device in the first place.  Anybody on here have some knowledge on the 
topic?

Phil.
K0NX