AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2024 - 86

JAN FEINDT
RUDDER & WRENCH
PROFICIENCY /
Beating the beams
Shining a light on laser strikes
BY JONATHAN FAY
I LOOKED DOWN at my panel and could
see nothing. A moment before, I was preparing
to turn base when I noticed what
looked like police lights to the right of my
flight path just before a brilliant flash of
blue filled my field of view. In an instant, I
lost my night vision. Nothing can prepare
you for looking down at your instruments
for reference only to see blackness. I could
see a few bright lights in the distance and
tried to level out my wings using them as a
reference, but I was in for a ride! I put the
airplane on the ground safely that night
and tracked down the evidence to convict
the man who pointed the laser at me.
86
AOPA PILOT / May 2024
The flight had started out as a quick
trip to Arlington Municipal airport (AWO)
to help my friend and fellow Jeep enthusiast
John Marzulli put his hardtop on
his Jeep for the winter. It was the Sunday
before Thanksgiving, so it was getting
dark early. John and I are part of a group
of homebuilders in the Pacific Northwest
who enjoy off-roading in the backcountry,
with Zenith bush planes and Jeeps.
I take flying at night seriously. I had lost
a co-worker to a night CFIT accident a few
years prior who was also on a similar " milk
run " to drop his airplane off at the avionics
shop north of me. He had lost situational
awareness and cut the corner into a mountain.
Having synthetic vision and a moving
map as well as IFR training, I believe, is
essential for responsible night flying in our
region. As I turned downwind, I used the
menu buttons and touchscreen to dim the
panel to a minimum so I would have less
light distraction for landing. I did not know
it at the time, but refreshing myself with the
actions needed to change the brightness
might have saved my life a few minutes later.
I continued the downwind leg and began
setting up the airplane for the descent when
I noticed some blue lights in an alley around
a building. I thought it might be a police car
and I looked down to see what was going
on. Then I realized the light had become
a beam and moved to fill my cockpit. All I
could see was blue. I looked away but the
beam kept following the airplane, bouncing
off the white wings and filling the cockpit
with intense blue light. I turned to face
away and banked the airplane to put the
belly to the laser. He still followed me. I leveled
my wings with reference to the few
distant bright lights, but I could not see the
panel. The muscle memory from dimming
the display just moments ago kicked in and
I pushed the sequence of buttons and tapped
around in the general area where the UI for
brightening the screen had been until the
screen became visible. I raised it to daylight
levels so I could see.
In that moment I remembered watching
an AOPA video by Dave Hirschman
where he and Mike Filucci had blacked out
the cockpit of a tandem airplane and flew
zero-zero using only synthetic vision while
Hirschman flew backseat as safety pilot with
full visibility. They did three passes on the
runway and two landings. While they said
this was not something any lawyer or panel
manufacturer would ever recommend, it did
demonstrate it was possible that in an emergency
this might be a way to survive.
I considered the alternative of a blind goaround,
but I did not have a missed approach
procedure loaded and I was low and was not
sure what type of obstacle clearance I could
expect, and I was at a perfectly good airport
with a mile-long runway more than 100
feet wide with even more grass runway on
the sides. I did not want to risk being lit up
again by doing another pass in the pattern, so
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2024

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