I've got a few questions about skin pockets and smuggling compartments.

In the SR4 book, it says that an item hidden in a skin pocket may be spotted by an observer who gets 3+ hits on an Intuition + Perception text. (Items in smuggling compartments are better hidden and require 4+ hits.) In the description of how the Palming skill works (as supplemented by the later Concealing Gear section), it says that the item is successfully hidden if the character wins an opposed test of Agility + Palming (plus or minus the item's concealability modifier) versus the observer's Intuition + Perception. And if the character is being actively patted down, you halve the concealability modifer and the observer rolls Intuition + Agility instead of Intuition + Perception. By contrast, if the character doesn't have the Palming Skill, he or she doesn't get to roll any dice at all and the observer is simply making a success test.

1. Is the description above of how the tests work correct?

2. What does it mean for an item to be actively hidden (such that the character gets to add the Palming skill to the test)? In my group, we agree that a character with the Palming skill who stashed a knife in his or her boot or who hid a data chip under his or her tongue gets to use the Palming skill. Does any attempt to hide an item-- no matter how minimal -- mean that the Palming skill applies?

3. Do characters with decent Palming skills and high Agility really benefit at all from having Skin Pockets? For example, take a character with Agility 6, the Stealth skill group at 4, a concealable holster, and a holdout pistol. Doesn't that person have 15 dice and thus is likely to get more than the three hits he or she would get by using a skin pocket? Or if an item is hidden in a Skin Pocket, do the hits on the Palming test simply add onto the threshold for the observer to spot an item hidden in a Skin Pocket?

4. What size items can fit in Skin Pockets and Smuggling Compartments? We tend to deem the size of skin pockets and smuggling compartments to be about the same size, and allow anything up to the +0 Concealability Modifier on the chart in the Concealing Gear section (e.g., up to heavy pistols, tasers, grenades, goggles, and commlinks but not medkits, machine pistols, and clubs). How do your tables handle the capacity of Skin Pockets and Smuggling Compartments?

Thanks in advance for the guidance.

To me "actively" means trying to conceal the item itself rather than just putting it in a concealed container. So pretty much anything but smuggling compartment.

Skin pocket and smuggling compartments have a chance against naked patting. Improvised palming does not.

Smaller than that: heavy pistol size is what fits into the large smuggling compartments that can only be built into cyberlimbs.

Finally, don't forget all this only applies to physical search. Decent security systems will have scanners too.