I remember, travelling on a prop-airline to Ireland, on the very day John Lennon was assassinated. That would be around about the time of 'peak-IRA' bombing on the mainland UK. I was carrying the very largest Air-Freight container I could find in downtown Brixton. When I arrived at Shannon Airport, Cork, Eire, the customs chap asked me to open it up and inside was a full-size old-world Kenwood Hybrid HF transceiver, with all the trimmings & pretty much everything else I owned. He looked at it, gawped, scratched his head and waved me through. Sometime in the future, the probable plan is; only politicians fly, and I get to go safely, by donkey-cart.
How many bags, cartons, or crates would you need? It probably wouldn't throw-up some red flares. It'd throw up one heck of an excess baggage charge.
In-baggage: I label and include my biz card with phone number (when I used to travel...) Never had a problem getting out of Dayton, for example.
I used to travel frequently with my KX package. Everything goes in a backpack I carry on, cables, and spares they go in my suitcase which is checked. I put AA's in the radio so if they want me to show its lights up I can. Along with sometime an extra antenna if I am taking more than the minimalist gear I need for POTA. Sometimes I have hard cased it but still the size of a planeside or overhead storage. Only once is 18 years of flying 2-5 times a month did I ever have TSA want me to open it. Strangely enough I've had more issues taking my competition archery gear. If I had a tip or two its take as little as possible on the plane, and for batteries and spare stuff, just use a ziplock bag that can be seen through and put that in your checked bag.
I use to work for the USN as a Civilian and would have to travel a lot, TSA would always pull the radios out and X-ray separately and then try to put it back. My FT60 tried to rip the battery pack apart, fortunately, another person told the guy to stop as he would be having to pay for a new one. One time I had a metal box where I transported my Ic730 they X-ray it and put it on a special machine then shot it 20 ft across the room. I checked an FT817nd in and when I got home the display panel was damaged. The only place that gave me a hard time was Dubai UAE where they confiscated the Icom 730, took the ships, Captain, USEmbassy, and Navy department to get the radio back
What kind of problems? I am genuinely curious - what problems have people run into? International travel will have it's own issues depending on where you're going (mainly customs issues), but TSA here in the US sees electronics on probably 95%+ of the travelers going thru their checkpoints. I have traveled with a TS-440SAT, FT-857, IC-703, and various handhelds on hundreds of flights in the mainland US, USVI, Puerto Rico, etc. Other than a secondary inspection, I never have run into an issue.
I've travelled commercial air carriers many times with ham radio equipment and even operated two meters from the air, with the captain's permission. On one occasion it turned out that the captain was also a ham and even had ham equipment with him in the cockpit. This was about 25 years ago. But currently when I travel with my QRP package the thing that gets TSA's attention the most is the coil of antenna wire and feed line. Never had them pay any attention to the radio or battery pack. Some years ago, in my own plane, I had a 2 meter/6 meter dual band rig mounted in the instrument panel with a 2 meter 5/8 wave antenna (which is 1/4 wave for 6 meters) mounted on the aft fuselage. This worked out great and was a lot of fun. No TSA involved!
True story: When I travelled internationally with a television production crew we would often carry several hundred pounds of production gear, cables and batteries. Seldom had any issues with that but once coming out of Bangkok airport one of my colleagues was singled out of the line and interrogated in a small room down the hall. He was asked about the individually wrapped slices of Kraft cheese in his bag. When he took one, pealed the wrapping and took a bite out of it, the officers covered their heads and dove under the table.
".....newest models include bio-sniffers that can detect COVID-19 [SARS Delta and variants]." If that's the case why should everyone be required to have a vaccine passport?
I flew from SLC to MIA with a Xiegu G90, a WRC with all of it's attachments (coax, radials, etc), a 6 ah Bioenno battery, and microphone, and keyer. I told the TSA gal that I had Amateur Radio equipment, and she just said to take the radio out, and put it in the tray. That was it. I made it there, and back with no problems, and got a POTA activation in another state for my trouble!
