Pulled over for speeding...

[Airwaves]

Originally posted by NoBozo

FWIW: Over 40 years ago when I was in the Navy, we had a little hand held instrument called a "Stadimeter". It was totally mechanical/optical....that worked something like a Marine Sextant....by measuring angles..Except it was designed to give you RANGE to a target. I'm sure that today it would be really easy to do the same thing with current technology.... for pennys.

Originally posted by Kamper

There ae numerous range-finder devices available for hunters using optical or simple mechanical techniques.

The simplest is inspired by the golf range finder. A viewer/telescope has several images of a golf flag in a variety of sizes. You hold the image over the target flag and when it matches, you have the range. (Our golfing members can probably give a more accurate price but I think these are around $20.) There is a sniper scope that uses the same technique but with dots that represent the size of an average human head. Since there is usualy at least one human head visible on a boat this method would work well enough for calculating boat ranges like 150'.

While it sounds like only minimal training would be needed...training would still be needed especially if the MPO wanted to use the findings in court.

Then factor in that the MP boat was being operated by a single individual, at night, doing 55MPH over an uneven surface (the lake) while trying to maintain control of his boat and maintain a "fix" on his "target"...Winnipesaukee. How would he be able to bring either device to his eyes in order to use these nifty little tools?

One other thing that has been lost in the discussion is the speed of Winnipesaukee's boat. In his post he stated:

we were cruising in the Gilford-Governor's Island area, listening to the radio doing the boat's minimum planing speed--about 18mph or so. I didn't have the GPS, but I wasn't doing 25mph. This fact is certain.

The 30-35MPH figure came from the MPO that was chasing him from behind (or somewhere off to the port side) using the formula that he had to travel 55MPH to catch up to him! If the MPO had kicked it up a notch and done 70MPH to catch up I wonder how fast Winnipesaukee would have been going then?

Sounds like another case of BWMPOB!