I’m into electronics, and I get into building circuits as a sort of hand/brain busywork in a similar manner to the way that many women knit. I have a long plane flight coming up this week, and I’d like nothing more than to bring a few little components to build stuff on the plane. I’d be using a breadboard and a few components, which looks something like this, and is pretty small - probably about the size of a pack of cigarettes.
I realize in a post-9/11 world, this is asking for trouble. I can see the headlines now; “Plane Diverted…“It looked like he was building a bomb”…etc.”
Questions:
Factual - am I allowed to bring this stuff on board and play with it?
Opinion - what are the chances of someone seeing that and freaking out?
I don’t think there is a specific rule saying you cannot bring wires and breadboards onto a plane but when you pull that out on the airplane people will freak.
Do you think that there’s any way I could let the flight attendants know ahead of time, in case any other passengers have reservations? I’d also tell the people sitting next to me what I’m doing. I’d REALLY like to work on some of these projects while I have hours to kill.
Not gonna happen. A girl got held by airport security for having a little breadboard LED star on her sweatshirt, she wasn’t even getting on a plane. Someone is 100% guaranteed to freak out if you’re fiddling with one in the air.
I remember seeing a 50-ish guy with a boombox that had wires dangling out of th back (in 1993) on a flight from Toronto to New York. It freaked me out back then, and I’d imagine today it would create all sorts of commotion.
You could tell them what you were building, but why would they believe you? What if you were building a device that could interfere with something on the plane?
Nope, check it and move on. It’s just not going to happen. You’d get arrested if they caught you taking your camera flash apart, do you really think this is going to go over well.
And if not, just work on circuit design using a paper and pencil. You can go as far as designing the component layout for breadboarding, which IMHO is more time-consuming and interesting than the actual assembly.
Hahaha! You cannot be serious here. Sure you could bring along your electronics kit to play with but you know full well that you could not pull this off without freaking out a large group of passengers. Wires and blinky things that people don’t understand on a plane will make them panic. Get a sketchbook and call it a day.
The thing is, if you went up to security and explained it, if they took the time to sit down, understand what you had and what you were going to do, then there shouldn’t be a problem. But they aren’t going to take time out for one passenger, so don’t bother trying.
