Here is a relevant post I recently submitted to the QRP-L lists which may be of interest to folks here.
For the record, no one asked me to turn anything on. -john W4PAH Hi all, I recently made a trip to Anchorage, AK for work and decided to carry on two 17Ah SLA (sealed lead-acid) batteries to support my operations. Some folks on the list said "don't risk it" and "ship them ahead of time". Others said, "tape the terminals and pack them in your carry-on". Since I had done this in the past (with 7Ah batteries) I decided to risk it again. I found a web page on the TSA's site which was helpful and printed it out to carry with me. http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtravel/assistant/batteries.shtm This ultimately proved helpful during my departure from RDU (Raleigh Durham Airport) on Saturday morning. The TSA agent (who had 1 stripe on his shoulder-boards) told me that "unless I had an electric wheelchair, I wasn't allowed to carry on these batteries". I explained to him that I had taped the terminals and packed them in bubble-wrap to protect them from damage. I showed him the web page which I had printed out which stated that you must "Place each battery in its own protective case, plastic bag, or package, or place tape across the battery's contacts to isolate terminals. Isolating terminals prevents short-circuiting." I had followed all of the rules. He brought over his supervisor who had three stripes on her shoulder boards (I have no idea how many you can have, but I saw folks with one, two, and three). She read my printout and looked in a manual she had. After reading it a few minutes she let me pass. I thanked the one-striper for his patience (and tried not to do so in a sarcastic or snarky way), and re-packed my bag. Success! On the way back from my trip, I was again pulled aside and another one-striper unpacked my carry-on and ran everything through again. He said, "Oh, you must be an amateur radio operator". We had a short conversation. He was impressed with the radios and stuff I had. ;-) No questions at all, he just wanted to make sure the SLA batteries weren't concealing something in the x-ray image that could've been below or above them in the bag. So, I think in the future the lesson learned is to be prepared by following the rules for protecting your batteries from the TSA's web site (tape over terminals to prevent a short, pack the batteries in bubble wrap or a bubble-wrap envelope), printing out the page from the TSA's web site, and be patient as you go through all levels of TSA employees until you reach someone who actually knows the rules. 73 -john W4PAH P.S. I wasn't able to do much operating at all while in Alaska, unfortunately. My free day ended up being very rainy and I wasn't able to find a covered picnic table at the city park where I visited. ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
