Hi All,
As I was looking through my RSS feeds, I noticed an article on flying with prototype electronics, and thought it might be useful to some of you as Championships is coming up, and no one likes dealing with delays at the airport. You can find it here.
That is a terrific read. Thanks for posting it. It’s great advise for any of the teams flying to champs on how to act with security at the airports. Check what you can and don’t screw around.
If you’re worried about that thing I’m helping you with I’ll get you something on my company letterhead. If they have issues with it I’ll gladly address them. Just don’t show up at the airport in a trench coat, a fedora and t-shirt that says something violent.
I think I recall a story from a while back about them and their trailer, which had BOMB SQUAD emblazoned on it… Remember getting a laugh out of it. If the 16 folks could leave a pointer for a new crop of admirers?
They have a deal with their sponsor that they don’t wear the dark blue Bomb Squad tshirt outside of competition. I know this one because I tried to trade for one
Techhelp, I’m not too worried about that board raising eyebrows, I find things like actual wiring tends to cause more problems, ie, a cypress wired on a breadboard or a team’s electronics board if they chose to have that be part of their witholding.
Joe: I really really hope that letter was proactive and not reactive, I can’t imagine how crushing it would be for a team to find a busted up robot due to improper handling by the TSA / other airport staff (or anyone else for that matter).
John: I’ve never flown with a large group of other teenagers, but plenty of teenagers like joking around (My brother once told the TSA I had a bomb, I explained that he didn’t know how to properly behave at an airport), so I think its never bad to remind large groups of teenagers how to behave at an airport, particularly with possibly sketchy looking devices. I was once searched because I had an external hard drive in my bag that was an internal hard drive in an enclosure, and it didn’t look like your standard external hard drive.