I do video documentaries, mostly for travel. My normal hassle with airport security is all the stuff I bring in my carry-on, my cameras and lenses will never see the inside of a cargo hold but because many of my camera accessories I make myself it is always fun at security.
As an example, since pretty much all video cameras use 7.2 volt batteries and Lithium Ions are now the horror of the skies, not to mention expensive as all heck, I simply built several battery packs that hold rechargeable AAs. I made my camera connectors to act as universal links to the battery packs by using the two-prong trailer wiring adapters. Now, any battery pack hooks up to any camera, as well as my audio receiver and even lighting. The AAs are cheaper, have a lot more available wattage and I also made a parallel adapter so I can tie multiple packs together to further increase the run time.
The negative to all these little gizmos is that they have an interesting look on the xray scanners. Let's see, small plastic boxes with wires and connectors coming out of them. Then there are the automatic chargers, once again 9 inch long devices with lots of electronics and stuff, plus the 40 some odd batteries I carry. And the cameras, lenses, netbook, external harddrive. I always just tell them to just go ahead and search the bag, instead of spending 10 minutes trying to figure out what everything is on their little scanner.
NOW, I'll be adding in my e-cig stuff. Oh joy. What could be more suspicious than things with wires hanging out and connectors, some bottles of weird liquid, a few long thin cylindrical things that might be blasting caps. I can hardly wait until February when we do Rome and Paris. This should be fun.
I do however appreciate all the ideas on stealth vaping. I've actually been trying some of these out at home to see how they work.
Let you know how this all goes in a few months.
dave
As an example, since pretty much all video cameras use 7.2 volt batteries and Lithium Ions are now the horror of the skies, not to mention expensive as all heck, I simply built several battery packs that hold rechargeable AAs. I made my camera connectors to act as universal links to the battery packs by using the two-prong trailer wiring adapters. Now, any battery pack hooks up to any camera, as well as my audio receiver and even lighting. The AAs are cheaper, have a lot more available wattage and I also made a parallel adapter so I can tie multiple packs together to further increase the run time.
The negative to all these little gizmos is that they have an interesting look on the xray scanners. Let's see, small plastic boxes with wires and connectors coming out of them. Then there are the automatic chargers, once again 9 inch long devices with lots of electronics and stuff, plus the 40 some odd batteries I carry. And the cameras, lenses, netbook, external harddrive. I always just tell them to just go ahead and search the bag, instead of spending 10 minutes trying to figure out what everything is on their little scanner.
NOW, I'll be adding in my e-cig stuff. Oh joy. What could be more suspicious than things with wires hanging out and connectors, some bottles of weird liquid, a few long thin cylindrical things that might be blasting caps. I can hardly wait until February when we do Rome and Paris. This should be fun.
I do however appreciate all the ideas on stealth vaping. I've actually been trying some of these out at home to see how they work.
Let you know how this all goes in a few months.
dave
