> Was Re: [EE]:: Urgent project - due in NZ in 6 hours ... :-) >=20 > On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 9:35 AM, wrote: >=20 > > I am wondering if you would ever see your luggage again if sent off with > > a piece of electronics holding a battery, after going through the > > airport x-ray. I can imagine sitting in the boarding lounge only to hear > > a controlled explosion across the airfield as a suspicious piece of > > luggage is blown up ... >=20 > Probably tongue in cheek. :) It was intended as tongue in cheek, but as he appears to be talking about luggage that is to go in the hold, it is also half serious, think in terms of the aircraft brought down over Lockerbie ... > I've never been stopped departing, even through XRay, I'm sure my > laptop bag looks suspect. The only thing was at the height of security > scares, they wanted to see the laptop boot, and did not care for the > masses of random boards with LiPo small batteries. I was thinking more in terms of x-ray checks on checked baggage, where you have no opportunity to explain the contents. It seems to be checked baggage handling that Russell wants to test the g forces on. I have been asked to power up my laptop exactly once at hand baggage x-ray, and that was at LA prior to boarding an international flight. Since then it seems to be sufficient to have it separately x-rayed. I did have a 'classic stop and search' once when going out to French Guiana. I was travelling out there to do final pre-launch checks on an instrument we had built, before satellite launch, and there was some doubt about the mirror coating on the first mirror in the optical path, so I was asked to take a small telescope unit with me and see what I could do about inspecting the mirror. I got to Heathrow, only to find my checked baggage was too heavy, but my hand luggage was well under weight, so took the telescope out of my suitcase, put it in the laptop bag, and now both were within limits. Got through Heathrow without problems, to Paris, and proceeded to check in to French Guiana. Now imagine what a telescope about 12" long and around an inch and a half diameter, made of metal, with a mounting post to sit it on a base, coming off at about 3/4 from the front looks like on an x-ray that is set up to specifically identify metal objects. All of a sudden the security staff got quite animated, until I was able to unwrap it enough for them to confirm it was a 'scientific telescope' and not a pistol ... =20 > All this makes me think they know exactly what they are looking for > and can tell the difference between a usb stick with a battery and > WMDs >=20 > Although I'm curious if others have had problems. Yeah, but I am envisaging something a little larger than a USB stick, like a PCB about 2" x 3" with a few chips and a Cr2032 battery or similar on it. I would start to have suspicions of it being some form of electronic timer device (which it is, but not for that purpose), especially if it is essentially unpackaged, i.e. it is not in some identifiable plastic box that looks like it could be a radio or similar. If the battery happens to be in a separate holder with flying leads that would start alarm bells ringing ... As a side issue to this I believe an American country singer had to check his guitar a while back on an American Airlines flight (normally he had been allowed to take it as cabin baggage). Said guitar was pretty valuable, and passengers watching out the aircraft windows witnessed it being tossed around the tarmac by baggage handlers. Needless to say it arrived at destination severely damaged. Singer then wrote a song about event, and I believe it ended up on YouTube, went viral and caused much embarrassment to AA who had refused to compensate him for the damage. Apparently the viral nature of the video caused AA to change their mind, and so another song was writ, but berating them for having to go this route to get just compensation. --=20 Scanned by iCritical. --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .