Safeguarding Concertina during travle

[saguaro_squeezer]

As I'm getting ready to travel and having seen a couple of fresh theft incidents, I was wondering if there was already an advice thread for keeping your concertina, yours. I do have insturment insurance and pictures and will do my best to not let go of it or let it out of my sight. Are there any othe tips from members who travel frequently?

 

Thanks for any advice!

 

 

[Kautilya]

As I'm getting ready to travel and having seen a couple of fresh theft incidents, I was wondering if there was already an advice thread for keeping your concertina, yours. I do have insturment insurance and pictures and will do my best to not let go of it or let it out of my sight. Are there any othe tips from members who travel frequently?

 

Thanks for any advice!

http://www.concertina.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=11289&st=0&p=112480&hl=security&fromsearch=1entry112480

 

and be thankful you are not flying Ryanair at the moment with their musical instrument charges - unclear of course whether a micro tina in a micro box of its own counts as another piece of hand luggage..........I suppose one could wear it around the neck with a neck strap and say it was jewellery. It looks mainly as though it is an attack on fiddlers (musical ones) to scrape in more cash

 

http://tinyurl.com/39xkby2

Edited September 13, 2010 by Kautilya

[Sean Minnie]

1. DO NOT CHECK IT - TAKE IT HAND LUGGAGE

2. Place the case in a back pack or some other bag to disguise it a bit and make it less obvious what you are carrying

3. DONT LET IT OUT OF YOUR HANDS. If you sit down, wrap the back pack strap around your leg

4. Do not place it in the overhead bin, place it under the seat in front of you

[David Levine]

Treat it as if it is your replacement heart that is in the box.

Which, for some of us, it is.

[ben]

I agree with the other commentators - carry your concertina on board with you. I learned the hard way. My Tedrow concertina got squashed - not squeezed - in the luggage. Both sides of the concertinas were damaged. The fretwork was left in pieces. The repair bill of USD$ 750.00 was more than the price of my airplane ticket to Kingston, Jamaica. (So much for my memories of a vacation in the tropics).

Edited September 15, 2010 by Ben

[chris]

Hi

as far as the damage issue goes - get a good case that will stand up to being in a cargo bay. Some years ago I bought an 'Explorer' resin case to hold 2 concertinas, it was sized to fit in overhead lockers - so no problem I thought - however as we had to change planes in Chicago to get to Ohio I discovered that the plane used for the internal flight only had small lockers and the case travelled in the cargo bay. Due to the strength of the 'Explorer' case my concertinas survived unharmed.

Moral - hope for the best but plan for the worst

good luck

chris

[JimLucas]

as far as the damage issue goes - get a good case that will stand up to being in a cargo bay.

That can stand up to ill-treatment both in and out of the cargo bay. I'm trying to remember who it was reported (not here) watching in horror out the plane window as a hot-rodding forklift driver impaled his accordion in its very sturdy case on the fork.

 

Moral - hope for the best but plan for the worst

Here's another moral:

In reality, "the worst"

can

be far worse than you would imagine.

Case in point:

A bag of mine -- a plastic

hard shell

suitcase -- was compressed so badly when it was out of my sight that a tin full of candy that was inside it was irreversibly crushed to half its original height, though there were at least 4 inches (10 cm) of compressible clothing both above and below it. (The bag itself was not shattered, but only showed moderate damage.) Luckily, the notebook computer beside the candy tin was doubly insured, and the hard disk was still intact.

 

I was very glad that I had opted to take my concertina, rather than the computer, as hand baggage, because the concertina was more important to me.

[saguaro_squeezer]

Thank you, everyone, for your advice. I always take my concertina on board with me but didn't think about the between-the-feet aspect. I was more concerned with things like the IOM ferry but the backpack idea might make what it is less obvious.

 

At any rate, I appreciate everyone's input.

[David Barnert]

Here are two items I have mentioned before that I include again more for entertainment value than practical value. They have more to do with getting through airport security than preventing theft, and have apparently both actually happened although they are not likely to happen regularly:

 

1) If the security personnel asks you what it is, find a way to answer the question without using the word "concertina." Call it an accordion, a musical instrument, a squeezebox, etc. But "concertina" is on the list of banned items which must be confiscated as it is sometimes used to refer to concertina wire, which can be used as a weapon.

 

2) Do not place it on the x-ray scanner with the ends at the top and bottom (see left digram in my sig, below). The radially oriented levers look confusingly like components of a cluster bomb. No problem if the instrument is oriented horizontally (right digram in sig).