goldenlight
Enlightened
Arrested: The grandfather who 'attacked' an RAF Apache with an £8 torch
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-grandfather-attacked-RAF-Apache-8-torch.html
A lighting expert who has worked for the Queen has been arrested for shining an £8.45 torch at an RAF Apache helicopter gunship outside his home in the early hours.
Torben Merriott, 63, was woken by what felt and sounded like an 'earthquake' outside his bedroom window at 1am.
The grandfather used the torch to identify the aircraft.
He spotted one of two gunships on an exercise just '10ft above my garden' at his farmhouse in Stradbroke near Eye, Suffolk, and called the Ministry of Defence complaint line.
But instead of receiving an apology for the September 18 disturbance, Mr Merriott was visited three weeks later by police, who arrested him on suspicion of endangering an aircraft by dazzling the pilot.
Mr Merriott was taken to Bury St Edmunds police station where he was questioned and held in a cell for nine hours before being bailed pending further inquiries. The torch was also seized by officers.
He is now waiting to hear if he will be charged with endangering an aircraft, which carries a maximum two years in jail.
Mr Merriott, who owns a theatrical lighting firm, insists he did not put the aircraft at risk as he has had professional experience of lighting up flying helicopters at a Buckingham Palace event hosted by the Queen.
'Don't tell the Taliban that all they need is an eight-quid torch to bring down multi-million-pound high-tech gunships,' he said.
If the story is still there, there's a pic of a man holding what looks like a 4 D cell lantern, with a large reflector. Like the 2 gigazillion lantern I've seen at Target and other stores
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-grandfather-attacked-RAF-Apache-8-torch.html
A lighting expert who has worked for the Queen has been arrested for shining an £8.45 torch at an RAF Apache helicopter gunship outside his home in the early hours.
Torben Merriott, 63, was woken by what felt and sounded like an 'earthquake' outside his bedroom window at 1am.
The grandfather used the torch to identify the aircraft.
He spotted one of two gunships on an exercise just '10ft above my garden' at his farmhouse in Stradbroke near Eye, Suffolk, and called the Ministry of Defence complaint line.
But instead of receiving an apology for the September 18 disturbance, Mr Merriott was visited three weeks later by police, who arrested him on suspicion of endangering an aircraft by dazzling the pilot.
Mr Merriott was taken to Bury St Edmunds police station where he was questioned and held in a cell for nine hours before being bailed pending further inquiries. The torch was also seized by officers.
He is now waiting to hear if he will be charged with endangering an aircraft, which carries a maximum two years in jail.
Mr Merriott, who owns a theatrical lighting firm, insists he did not put the aircraft at risk as he has had professional experience of lighting up flying helicopters at a Buckingham Palace event hosted by the Queen.
'Don't tell the Taliban that all they need is an eight-quid torch to bring down multi-million-pound high-tech gunships,' he said.
If the story is still there, there's a pic of a man holding what looks like a 4 D cell lantern, with a large reflector. Like the 2 gigazillion lantern I've seen at Target and other stores
) My specialty is the Electronics and Weapons Systems on these aircraft. I can tell you from first hand experience (not in the air of course) that if either the pilot or the co-pilot gunner were somehow "dazzled" or distracted in any way, someone in the aircraft was doing something wrong. Firstly, there's virtually no chance that a military aircraft would be hovering at an altitude of "10 ft" above a civilians garden. 100 ft is a much more likely estimate. And at that range the cheap plastic light the man was using would be nowhere near enough to "dazzle" a pilot. Furthermore, since the exercise was at night, both pilots in the aircraft would be using their FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared) sight on the front of the aircraft. Without going into too much boring detail, those sights act as a nightvision for night flight. There is a single eyepiece each pilot wears on his/her helmet to use the FLIR and I can tell you, literally no amount of light (extremely bright flashlights, spotting lights, car headlights, even direct sunlight) is enough to make the FLIR display a dazzling image. So that information, coupled with the relatively weak power of the mans flashlight, leads me to believe that the RAF and the police for that area are certainly going overboard on this one, if the man's version of events is indeed true. Sorry for the long winded response, but I thought I'd try to clear a few things up.
