I was doing a little light reading of the crapola over at the CBP website. This document made my jaw drop!

Private flyers guide

Unfortunately, it's a DRM crippled file, and while you can open it and display it, you can't copy from it, so you will have to go view it yourself. Pages 3 to 5.

You will learn the 22 things that indicate illegal activity, such as:
- unusual modifications
- aviators who pay cash
- passenger seats are removed
- gas cans inside the aircraft
- muddy wheels
- etc!

And, they are willing to give up to a $250,000 "reward" if someone turns you in so that they can seize your plane. (Hey Zane, how 'bout you sell me your membership list!)

Anyway, I'm proud to say that in spite of being a low time newbie pilot, I scored a respectable 15 out of 22!

We have a grass strip in the mountains of northern PA. Back in the eighties my father owned a 235 Apache and flew it in and out of the strip on a regular basis. Looking back this was around the times that the Air America Drug Ring in Scranton was being investigated. Need less to say, a low slow twin that came rumbling up through the valleys to land at a remote strip got some attention. They must have been waiting because as soon as he landed he was surrounded by feds. They had him exit the plane and did a search of the plane. My father was a law abiding person and had nothing to hide. He found the experience to be rather comical and we offen laughed about in the years to follow.

A few years back..

...my son and I landed and set up camp at an isolated mountain strip near Dinzmore, Calif. Within minutes a big engined airplane sound began to echo off of the canyon walls. Soon a C-206 came snaking up the river valley and plopped down on the runway....only 50 feet from our campsite.

CHP(California Hwy Patrol) was painted on the the tail in large letters. As the 206 made a 180 and headed back toward our camp I quickly hid the short barreled 12 guage shotgun that had been resting against my chair.

The CHP aircraft pulled up a few feet from our campsite. Two guys in the front seats were wearing flack jackets and helmets. Vertically between their seats were mounted a pair of shotguns or high powered rifles. With the engine loping they sat there for 5 or 6 minutes....busily talking on their radios and writting. I continued to puff on my Montecristo cigar while my son busied himself with the coffee pot. Shortly thereafter they opened the throttle and roared off, up the narrow canyon.

When I mentioned the incident at our fuel stop the next day I was told that the CHP maintians a fleet of airplanes and helicopters in the area...they monitor and chase drug runners. The FBO operator said ...."They had been monitoring your flight...long before you landed."

The bad guys ruin everything for the rest of us.

Bob

z3skybolt wrote:A few years back..

...my son and I landed and set up camp at an isolated mountain strip near Dinzmore, Calif. Within minutes a big engined airplane sound began to echo off of the canyon walls. Soon a C-206 came snaking up the river valley and plopped down on the runway....only 50 feet from our campsite.

CHP(California Hwy Patrol) was painted on the the tail in large letters. As the 206 made a 180 and headed back toward our camp I quickly hid the short barreled 12 guage shotgun that had been resting against my chair.

The CHP aircraft pulled up a few feet from our campsite. Two guys in the front seats were wearing flack jackets and helmets. Vertically between their seats were mounted a pair of shotguns or high powered rifles. With the engine loping they sat there for 5 or 6 minutes....busily talking on their radios and writting. I continued to puff on my Montecristo cigar while my son busied himself with the coffee pot. Shortly thereafter they opened the throttle and roared off, up the narrow canyon.

When I mentioned the incident at our fuel stop the next day I was told that the CHP maintians a fleet of airplanes and helicopters in the area...they monitor and chase drug runners. The FBO operator said ...."They had been monitoring your flight...long before you landed."

The bad guys ruin everything for the rest of us.

Bob

Do you know how hard it is getting to run an honest trafficking operation in this country?!

If anyone wants a laugh (its so stupid you have to laugh about it) take the required "Security Test" that flight instructors are supposed to take to keep TSA happy.

Dumbest dang thing I've seen in years.

DHS is just plain arrogant and ignorant.

MTV

What DHS has enacted and what they are proposing really hasn't been talked about on this forum. I just read an article in the December issue of In Flight USA in which there is a speech from Michael Chertoff.

After reading this article any sane GA pilot will want to scream to the heavens, at least. These people, Chertoff and his minions, are dead set on restricting our ability to fly to the point of eliminating ALL GA flying as we know it.

This makes Canada look better as a place with some personal freedoms. Don't bring up the handgun/gun registration, they do, after all, have politicians too.

Damn... All these years I was a terrorist and just didn't know it.

Reminds me of the joke about the old cowboy and the lesbian.

Gump

now you have to tell the joke.

Tim

Ditto Gump...
Tell the Joke


I need something to get blood going...minus 27 here this morning


p

An old cowboy sat down at the bar and ordered a drink. As he sat sipping his drink, a young woman sat down next to him. She turned to the cowboy and asked, "Are you a real cowboy?"

He replied, "Well, I've spent my whole life, breaking colts, working cows, going to rodeos, fixing fences, pulling calves, bailing hay, doctoring calves, cleaning my barn, fixing flats, working on tractors, and feeding my dogs, so I guess I am a cowboy."

She said, "I'm a lesbian. I spend my whole day thinking about women. As soon as I get up in the morning, I think about women. When I shower, I think about women. When I watch TV, I think about women. I even think about women when I eat. It seems that everything makes me think of women."

The two sat sipping in silence.

A little while later, a man sat down on the other side of the old cowboy and asked, "Are you a real cowboy?"

He replied, "I always thought I was, but I just found out I'm a lesbian."

Here's a true story that happened to my friend. After camping at JC he gave a friend of ours wife a ride back to McCall because she wanted to get home before her husband was ready to come back (they live in McCall). He landed and taxied to her hangar and let her off then, without shutting down, headed over to the self serve gas pumps. As he is pumping gas several cop cars show up and start questioning him as to what he is doing. Seems someone on the field called into the snitch line that somebody suspicious had dropped a woman with a backpack off at a private hangar. Once the tsa phone # is called it has to be investigated. He cooperated and produced all the documentation requested but after a lengthy interrogation began to get pissed because nothing was getting resolved. After dealing with the good cop/bad cop individuals he was released to go. The one cop wanted to impound his plane! Beware the 900# gorilla. Our individual freedoms are waning these days. Look at the new border crossing requirements-what a pain. The proposed large aircraft (12,500# plus) security proposals are absurd.
I am glad I can enjoy buzzing my plane around still but I worry the next generation will be regulated out of the sky.

I once landed at a strip in the San Diego back country... Got out to pee and noticed two figures at port arms running towards me from the other end of the strip... I got in not knowing who they were and started my takoff roll. THis was in my old Tripacer... CLimbed out to about 300 ft above ground and looked straight down at them as i continued climbing... I saw then that they were some sort of law enforcement... Border patrol as it turned out... looking through binoculars at me... I pushed a quick left rudder to not show my N number and exited stage West.... THrough the grapevine I learned a couple weeks later the BP was looking for a "Cessna' with the first two numbers 71... Mine were close so I figured it was me... I called the local BP headquarters and got a sergeant who immediately wanted my name and N number.. I refused and asked what this was all about... He stated his guys at the scene that day reported that, " I took off and Dove my plane at them and attempted to Hit them"...Reallly I said, and what do you think would have happened to me if I had hit anyone... After a long conversation in which I told him his "Guys" were liars and I would tell them to their faces he asked my identification again.. I refused and he said well maybe we'll meet you out there again some day... "we're only here to help you"" Yeah right.. Make up lies to justify your existance...During the course of our conversation he mentioned that one of the Officers had contemplating shooting at me in the air.

Can the feds really see ya crossing the border if you've got the transponder off, and don't use your radio, fly low, etc.? Everything I've heard the last couple of years about ATC is that it's overwhelmed and antiquated. That's the whole argument for the user fees isn't it? This kinda reminds me of the way CSI can find a single speck of blood or hair at a crime scene on TV and come up w/ a suspect using DNA in about an hours worth of lab time VS. real life where if your house gets broke into and fingerprints, blood, footprints are all over the place the sheriff'll tell ya the finger prints decay in about 10 min. so they're no good, the blood will take about a year to process the DNA if we even bother to sample it and send it to the FBI, and we're not even going to look at the footprints because everyone has feet.
Just wondering.

wirsig wrote:Can the feds really see ya crossing the border if you've got the transponder off, and don't use your radio, fly low, etc.? Everything I've heard the last couple of years about ATC is that it's overwhelmed and antiquated. That's the whole argument for the user fees isn't it? This kinda reminds me of the way CSI can find a single speck of blood or hair at a crime scene on TV and come up w/ a suspect using DNA in about an hours worth of lab time VS. real life where if your house gets broke into and fingerprints, blood, footprints are all over the place the sheriff'll tell ya the finger prints decay in about 10 min. so they're no good, the blood will take about a year to process the DNA if we even bother to sample it and send it to the FBI, and we're not even going to look at the footprints because everyone has feet.
Just wondering.

Perhaps the local BCP fed can jump in on this question...

I thought about this for a while while cuttin' firewood and realized I'd hijacked the thread. I had read further down that document that was linked to by kevbert and got to steamin' about the feds demanding pilots to let'em know everytime you sneeze near the border and totally forgot about the original post.

That is funny, I'd bet there's not too many pilots around here that could ace that list of suspicious activities.

I thought there were supposed to be high flying surveillance planes monitoring the border? I cross on a regular basis and would love to avoid the hassle of customs, but would sure hate to get caught circumventing them. Probably a good way to loose a plane.

wirsig wrote:......real life where if your house gets broke into and fingerprints, blood, footprints are all over the place the sheriff'll tell ya the finger prints decay in about 10 min. so they're no good, the blood will take about a year to process the DNA if we even bother to sample it and send it to the FBI, and we're not even going to look at the footprints because everyone has feet.
Just wondering.

Reminds me of when my house got broke into about 9 years ago, they sent Andy Griffith & Barney Fife out to take the report. Barney kept busy finding "clues" and Andy kept busy telling Barney that no, that fingerprint/handprint/footprint didn't mean nothin'.
Then abut 5 years later, the sheriff's office lady called and asked me if I'd ever recovered any of my stolen goods. I got pretty pissed off and told them I thought that was their job, and that maybe I shoulda been calling them to ask that same question. Pretty unsatisfactory experience both times as far as professionalism goes.

Eric

GumpAir wrote:An old cowboy sat down at the bar and ordered a drink. As he sat sipping his drink, a young woman sat down next to him. She turned to the cowboy and asked, "Are you a real cowboy?"...........He replied, "I always thought I was, but I just found out I'm a lesbian."

The punchline I heard was "barkeep, another round of drinks for us lesbians!".

I frequently fly extremely close to the border. If I'm in the work plane landing at our ag strip it has never been an issue, but in my cub landing at a local private strip, there is frequently a DOHS supercub, Black hawk, or Astar tail. They usually contact the airport manager to see what's up as he is very cooperative with them, but the helos have also been known to land to see for themselves.

Near the border they can pick you up easy, they've been picking up trikes lately, and that's got to be a lot smaller signature than an airplane...

I don't like it any... but I'm not about to risk my airplane.

Here's a slap in the face side note: one day I had the Supercub tail me to the private strip. He called the manager and was informed I was a "local" of decent report flying a supercub. That got his personal interest and he did a low approach to check it out. On the radio he said the dept. wouldn't let the cub land at that field anymore since it is dirt... It is a mile of the nicest graded "dirt" I've ever landed on!

Take care, Rob

why the hell head for mexico anyway...
nothing down there i need, i can see getto's on my trips to east l.a...
any place u can't fly ur bird with your favorite a/c gun on board, can't
be worth going to...