[Elecraft] air travel with SLA batteries (was Re: OT Carrying radios on commercial flight)

[John Shadle]

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.