Originally Posted by brentley
How heavy of a head do you have on this tripod? My landscape tripod is carbon fiber but with a pretty heavy ball head, I have never even tried to carry it on, I take my pelican case for my cameras and then I check a roller bag with the tripod in it. I figure that a tripod is not the sort of thing a bag thief will be that interested in, my cameras, however would look quite tasty (even though they are film).
I could envision a TSA minion thinking (rightly I might add) that the combo of the heavy head and the strong legs might become in effect quite an effective cudgel to knock people around with.
This is what I'm worried about, as "light" and "heavy" are very relative words when it comes to tripods. The sticks are about 4 pounds, and the video head is about 2 pounds. Compared to aluminum or magnesium tripods of the same size, it's about half the weight and, at least to me, doesn't appear "club like" (as some one else posted). I've always packed the tripod in a checked bag, but have never been comfortable doing that as it goes against my "no valuables, ever" rule for checked luggage. Even discounting theft, the likelihood that the bag will be misrouted is simply too high, so I'd prefer to carry it on with my camera gear. It fits very nicely on the back of my LowePro Minitrekker backpack, which contains all my gear.
I remain worried, though, that some inspector who is having a bad day will simply arbitrarily decide, "this could be used as a weapon," and refuse to allow it on board. I did read the discussion on flashlights -- as I understood it, conceivably, an inspector could decide that my MINI maglight, which weighs a couple of ounces and is about 5 inches long, could be used as a weapon and seized. I always keep a minimag in my carryon bag (it's smart to have a flashlight on an airplane and in a hotel -- you never know). If that get's excluded, I'm out $10. My tripod, on the other hand, is just too expensive to play inspector roulette with.