I must relate a safety issue that arose upon a flight last week.
I was flying a new airline that hasn't quite reached a point of stuffing
every seat to beyond capacity. "Great" you say? Well, I had a most unique
problem--too much space in the overhead bin. Yup, can't say that I've ever
had that problem before.
I placed my tripod in the overhead bin, but it was otherwise empty. I
didn't want it sailing around back and forth on landing so I had to find
another bin that already had bags stuffed in it. Well, we had a stop along
the way and a departing passenger jammed the tripod into the ceiling as he
was pulling his bag out. The quick release lever on the Bogan hex-plate
ball-head proceeded to puncture the vinyl ceiling in the bin. As I
deplaned a couple hours later I saw the damage and could actually see the
outer skin through the insulation!
Yikes, could you imagine the NTSB report on that crash? "Photographer's
tripod punctures cabin causing rapid decompression.... Oops, sorry about
that. Guess I'm doing too much flying these days...
Anyway, I looked at my Bogan 3001/ballhead tripod and realized that it is
really starting to show some serious abuse. You wanna talk brassing? The
head is getting pretty silvery these days. I think there is about 1/4 inch
missing in one corner. This tripod has been carried, unprotected, on
perhaps 200 flights and still performs flawlessly. Nothing has ever broken
on it.
I've been considering replacing it with one of these new geewiz
carbon-fiber, magnesium head wonders, but the incredible
ruggedness/reliability of my Bogan continues to amaze me. Anybody who
knows me, knows that I don't baby my equipment. I can't speak enough
positive about the quality of the Bogans.
Oh, as far as handchecking the tripod... The legs are covered with
pipe-insulation and wrapped with camo-ducktape. It looks kinda
para-military. Sure thing to get your bags searched. I seem to get the
spectral-analizer test more often than not. Maybe I should stop making
those references to the ATF while in security.
Ken (20 to Life) Norton
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