RE: [amsat-bb] Hand-carry Arrow antenna on airline flight?

["CobbComm E-mail" <mcobb@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Wayne,

I fly every week. I hand carry a laptop, associated cables, a PDA,
and gaggle of other things, I used to take an HT and some packet stuff
along to as well. I'm used to getting stripped searched at the various
security checkpoints. It's much different now that they are "unionized
federal employees"! It used to be that when they found "something, like
a ball point pen", that showed up on the x-ray like an atomic bomb, they
used to let it go, say as a ball point pen. Now, it could be a ninja weapon
from the Klingon's trying to enter the US Galaxy. I was in Fort Worth (DFW)
4
weeks ago. I'm so glad Texas has such fine union folks guarding our
airlines.
I was very excited to see that when I did all the "put you laptop and cell
phone stuff in the x-ray machine" that I would be free and clear. Shoot, I
thunked since I was in the care of the TSA that I was otay!
Ooooppppppppssssss,
I was wrong. That lady in a walker next to me kicked off the x-ray machine
and man they needed strip search her. Shoot she looked like Osama's mom.
Now it was my turn, so here I go, beeb beeb beeb
beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeebb.
Man the union went wild. Man they must have thought they got a bounus here
from the look of it. They IMMEDIATELY took me aside and were warming up the
KY
jelly. You could see it in there eyes, BOY, YOU MINE! So, I got pulled aside
and man did they search me. I'm sad to say they found my tweaker that I use
to
remove my hard drive on my laptop to switch the hard drive from Linux to
Windoze. Whew, here I thunked the new "non-English speaking union folks"
found
my Arrow antenna. Good news. they missed that.

Wayne, lemme give ya a little bit of insight, treat the new federal
"unionized"
non-English speaking dweeb's" like a Burger King drive up order taker and
you will be fine. In other words, leave the aluminum behind.

Mike



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-AMSAT-BB@amsat.org [mailto:owner-AMSAT-BB@amsat.org]On
Behalf Of Wayne Estes W9AE
Sent: Sunday, November 03, 2002 6:19 PM
To: amsat-bb@amsat.org
Subject: [amsat-bb] Hand-carry Arrow antenna on airline flight?


I plan to take my 7x7 Arrow antenna with me to the Fort Worth symposium.
I'm not taking much other stuff, so I was hoping to just put it in a
carry-on bag.  Has anybody had trouble hand-carrying a disassembled Arrow
antenna on an airline flight recently?  I'm concerned that a paranoid
airport security screener might think it could be used as a weapon.

Wayne Estes W9AE
Mundelein, IL, USA


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