I’ve been asked to travel abroad a couple of times next year. For at least one trip I will be transiting through the USA so I was thinking about stopping off on the way back and finding some nice summits to activate. Destination/routes are still TBC.
It would be useful to leave my radio gear in the USA for a week rather than arrange licences/import documentation for non CEPT countries where amateur radio isn’t common, and I have no desire/time to operate.
Some airports advertised luggage storage facilities. Has anyone used these before for storing radio equipment, including batteries?
Are there any other clever options, such as sending it by courier from the airport to a hotel for example?
I don’t have any experience with airport storage, as mine doesn’t offer it. Mine turns you towards outside companies offering the service, but they’re a daily fee so I’ve stayed away.
You could do a General Delivery at a post office. Though I believe they’ve started limiting the post offices with that service. They’ll hold a package for at least 15 days, often more if you’re near a popular thru-hike route.
Hostels will often hold packages, since hikers are a big part of their clientele and I’ve heard of people doing it with hotels, but not sure how long a hotel would be okay with.
I have a lot of experience doing this with thru hikes, if you’re staying in a major city I’m not sure how well any of this works. Extremely common in backpacking locations though.
In my experience hotels will accept deliveries marked “Hold for guest arrival” with (and without) a specific date and will also generally store luggage for a reasonable length of time if you have an onwards booking with them. I’ve managed 3-4 days in the past - over a week for deliveries - with no indication there was a limit on how long they’d hold it for, but if you spoke with them by email beforehand to make sure, it’s unlikely to be an issue in my experience.
I wouldn’t do that myself. When I ran a company it was quite common for people visiting the UK to ask for orders to be sent to hotels. These packages were so frequently lost that we had to stop this service. The incompetence of some hotels was frankly staggering. YMMV.
I suspect it is quite common practice in the US rather than the UK, and therefore more tolerated. I had two vendors actually recommend the approach to me as more reliable than other alternatives they’d done like post restante. In both instances they sent registered post so it was signed for by the hotel which may have made a difference.