Originally Posted by
Bradfo69
They are considerably heavier. I don't have the spec's in front of me but say a Pluto is 25 pounds, the Ascent is at least 40. In the flight case definitely over 50 and would have been something like $100 each way as a checked bag. It just barely meets the space requirements for a carry on, provided you remove the yoke which I did and put it in my suitcase. I basically got a folding luggage carrier with wheels and bungee corded it to that. Fine for walking around the airport although escalators are tricky. A pain to wheel down the aisle of the plane and worse holding people up trying to board as you unfasten it and try to carefully get it into an overhead bin. Pluto would be MUCH easier and might even be fine as a $25 checked bag in a flightcase. I think it's certainly under 50 pounds. For the small flights it actually had to sit in my lap. And 40+ pounds sitting on your lap for an hour in a plane gets weary too. Kind of cuts off circulation.
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Oh, and leaving for the trip at BWI, I had to plow it through 8" of snow in the long term parking lot at 4 am. Trust me.... dragging $7000 of delicate electronics through snow, jacked on caffeine and after sliding 60 miles down I-95 in a major ice storm on two hours sleep was stressful to say the least. And...really worrying about what security and customs was going to say all the way through this crazy journey on top of it. All was fine once we got there and, that's why I said I'd rather not go through that again but, I kinda have to. Out there on the beach, 12 watts made the difference!