[ccp4bb]: Transporting Xtals

[Juergen Bosch <jbosch@biochem.mpg.de>]

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Hi to everyone,

I always used to do the following procedure (haven't tried it since 11th
of
september):

e.g. Munich - Frankfurt - New York, or Munich - New York , Munich -
Grenoble with
different Airlines

1. Send a Fax & call them if necessary to the Security personel of the
airline
2. Send a Fax to the local Airport Security and if you don't have a
direct flight
to the other Airport Security as well
3. Send a Fax to the Toll (they'll xray your crystals in a huge xray
machine and
make a test for explosives, your dewar will be sealed with a special
official
tape)
4. And this is the most important point !!! Send an extra Fax to the
Captain of
the Flight your planning to be on, this is not very easy but possible.
He can
still stop your travel, if he's not informed - I had to delay a flight
once for 2
h from Frankfurt to NY because somebody who was responsible forgot to
hand over
the Fax to the captain.
5. Send a Fax to the arrival Airport, Toll (usually the Airline company
itself
will take care about this, but it's better to do it yourself !)
6. Be at the airport 2 h before departure (now it should be maybe 3-4 h)

7. Speak to the people and explain why you are travelling around the
world doing
stupid things (in their eyes)
8. have some additional printouts with you, explaining the principles of

crystallography and why we are doing this, alternatively you can give a
little
talk at the imigration *g* "Go ahead guy, we don't have the whole day
time ..."

I think it's not possible anymore to carry the dewar in the passengers
cabin
unfortunately, I think a transport case should be recommended these days
but and
this is again important: remove the Sticker called "Liquid Nitrogen".

The reason why I'm writing this is that once my dewar was left at the
toll in NY
because they thought Nitrogen has something to do with Nitroglycerol -
just
because of the "Nitro", I guess you can imagine what I thought, when the
german
toll in Munich told me that my transport item is still in NY for
security reason.



Have fun and sorry for grammar or misspelling *g*

Juergen Bosch



--
Juergen Bosch                                    Tel -49 -89 8578 2648
Max Planck Institut fuer Biochemie               Fax -49 -89 8578 2641
Abt. Molekulare Strukturbiologie                 bosch@biochem.mpg.de
Am Klopferspitz 18a                              http://www.biochem.mpg.de/
D-82152 Martinsried, Germany