travelling with dive lights

[victorzamora]

I had a pretty ghetto canister light that I've flown with a few times now. It's a stock Dive Rite Wreck Canister and HID light, but I have 3 3-cell LiPo packs from my R/C Plane hobby that I'm running in parallel to get like 6+ hr burn time....so inside this canister, I've got a bundle of wires to allow for running the cells in parallel, all the cells have an additional tab on them for balancing the cells, and I custom-soldered all of the connections. That, coupled with the fact it's a canister lighty (pretty atypical) got a lot of weird looks through security. With it being HID, I was afraid to flick it on for proof that it was a light. However, after a brief couple questions and an explanation the TSA guys asked more about cave diving than the light itself. I had the batteries installed, but not plugged in, and I had the assembly in my carry-on.

 

[miketsp]

This issue of loose or installed is regularly an issue. After being detected on the scanner I have often been asked to demonstrate that the light is actually a dive light and doesn't have something else inside, ie I have to turn it on. So what I've done is prepare plastic discs that I leave inside my lights to isolate the battery terminals for safety. The battery stays inside the light and if I have to demonstrate the light I just remove the disc. So far every inspector I've come across has been quite happy with this arrangement.