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Forrest Mimms On Modern Air Travel With a Bag Full of Electronics
Evidently even Forrest Mimms isn't famous enough to fly without hassle when carrying a briefcase full of electronics; he writes at Make about his experiences, both before and after 2001. A relevant slice:
After police were called when I was going through security at the San Antonio International Airport and after major problems going through security in Kona, Hawaii, I finally realized the obvious: Most people who don’t make things have no idea how to evaluate homemade equipment. Some are terrified by exposed wires and circuit boards, maybe because of bomb scenes in movies.
So I gave up. Now my carryon bag is only half stuffed with electronics; the rest is shipped ahead via FedEx.
"Evidently even Forrest Mimms isn't famous enough to fly without hassle when carrying a briefcase full of electronics"
Who?
I looked him up, and have no idea how anyone who isn't really into his books would know who he is (and probably not even then). He's literally not famous at all.
Yes because it is for private citizens to inconvenience themselves for the sake of a useless government bureaucracy that does a great imitation of invasiveness one would normally only find under tyranny. If you don't declare your sinful lack of conformity in advance, it's your fault - you were dre^Wpacking provocatively.
I completely agree...because I've done exactly what you suggest! I was flying to give a public outreach talk on physics and took some demos with me which included a microwave transmitter and receiver plus other electronics. At check-in I told the person behind the counter that my checked bag contained equipment which might look a bit strange since it was for physics demos for a talk I was giving. She told me that she didn't think it would be a problem but told me I could take it direct to a scanner they had in the check-in hall itself for checked bags. I took it there, explained again, the guy scanned it and said it looked fine and off it went on the conveyor belt.
I did the same on the flight back with the same result. No problems whatsoever and some curiosity as to what the demo was. I expect that if you explain that you have scientific equipment in your bag, why you have that equipment and that it might look a bit strange to the X-ray in advance you'll not have any problems. If you want to use actually a scientific device on the plane then the best thing to do is ask permission beforehand and not just state that you are going to use it to some random check-in person who probably has no technical background whatsoever. If this guy put even the tiniest amount of thought into getting his gear through security and getting permission to use it on a plane then I expect he would not have half the problems he claims to.
What's kind of strange is that up until the early 1970s there wasn't *any* security for air travel. At all. Some of the shuttle flights didn't even require you to buy a ticket in advance, they sold them on the plane.
Even after the first few hijackings, the airlines were stridently opposed to security screening, thinking it would turn off customers and make the airport experience a nightmare. They would have rather just paid the fucking ransoms and moved on.
I can remember in the late 1970s we used to ride our bikes to MSP and walk the gates. I'm sure we must have had to have gone through metal detectors, but they clearly didn't give a shit about a couple of 13 year old boys walking to the gates.
It's kind of hard to fathom why air security got so extreme relative to how lax it had been and how much the airlines resisted increasing it, even when their planes were pretty regularly getting hijacked.
(For great background, read "The Skies Belong to Us" -- a great review of both skyjackings generally and the Western Flight 701 hijacking to Algeria in particular).