[CQ-Contest] Carrying rig on airliner ?

[Trey Garlough]

> I need advice on the preferred method to haul my TS 850 on a
> trip. Naturally I wish to treat it as a carry-on item. Can I wrap it
> in protective material without any grief? Also, is it necessary to
> carry any proof of ownership (sales receipt) to prove it is mine? My
> destination is Canada.

When I toted my TS-850 to Ecuador in November I wrapped it in a bunch
of bubble pack and put it in my giant Samsonite suitcase (most
recently described on this mailing list by N6ZZ), along with my
clothes and a bunch of other stuff.  Worked great!

Turns out the 850 fits very nicely into the type of canvas handbag you
use for toting groceries and that you might receive as a freebee at a
computer geek expo like InterOp or MacWorld.  I found this to be a
nice way to carry the 850 as hand-baggage once on a US-to-US trip.

In my experience the greatest risk (by far) with carrying your rig as
hand-baggage is the "low bid" airport security people at the security
checkpoints with the x-ray machines.  I always carry a copy of my
radio license with me.  Because it's is an "official government
document" complete with US government seals and stuff, I find that it
is often effective in dazzling these people.

If you can't persuade these people to let you pass the checkpoint with
your radio, then you are hosed.  It seems that they are trained to
"make sure the electronic device" works (if they can be bothered)
before permitting it past the checkpoint, which to these people means
"THE FRONT PANEL LIGHTS UP."  The moral of the story is that if you
want to hand carry a rig, then 1) bring the power cord in your hand
baggage, 2) bring a power supply (if necessary, like with the 850) in
your hand baggage,and 3) if your TS-850 is really an empty shell with
a bomb inside, make sure THE FRONT PANEL LIGHTS UP.  Either that or
check the bomb in with the rest of your checked bags, because it
doesn't seem to matter to the people who scan those bags whether or
not THE FRONT PANEL LIGHTS UP.

What you don't want is to find yourself at some podunk airport with
only one security checkpoint (i.e. single point of failure) where the
security person decides you aren't going to carry your rig past their
checkpoint.  And at which third-world hell-hole airport did I recently
have this experience?  Miami International, Concourse C, with a dead
TS-930 that I was trying to carry home.

"It doesn't matter that you are a transit passenger and that the last
n security checkpoints in the last n airpots you have just come
through permitted you to carry your radio.  That was then, this is
now, and I have the intelligence of a potted plant.  And so does my
supervisor."

The rest of the Miami story is that I hussled around with my 930 under
arm until I could find an American Airlines "Customer Service Manager"
(this is a trick in itself), who turned out to be fantastic.

AA: Can you turn the radio on?
KO: Yes, but it's broken.  It doesn't work.
AA: But DOES IT LIGHT UP?    
     (you see, she understands how these people think!)
KO: Sure, but I didn't bring a power cable because the radio is broken.
AA: What kind of power cable do you need?
KO: The world's most common power cable for computers, such as with
    every computer and monitor in this building.
AA: Ahh.

The AA supervisor, and the supervisor of the potted plant, and the 930
and I took a walk over to gate C-1, where the AA supervisor (I'm not
making this up!) yanks the power cable out of the SABRE comptuer at
the gate and plugs it into the dead 930 (dead, except for the
frequency display), at which point the security supervisor nods her
head in approval and walks away.  IT LIGHTS UP, THEREFORE IT MUST BE
SAFE TO CARRY ON AN AIRPLANE!

--Trey, N5KO

PS: Another hint about hand-carrying anything that's fragile: take a
look at what's at the other end of the 3ft-high conveyor belt that
will be sending your valuables through the X-ray machine and make a
plan.  This is especially important if you need to get to the end of
the conveyor before your valuables, like in HC2 where all parcels are
immediately dismissed from the conveyor into a heap on the floor upon
exit from the x-ray machine.


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