Monday, November 10, 2008

November Articles Posted

Editorial: CGSIC in Savannah
The 48th meeting of the Civil GPS Service Interface Committee (CGSIC) was held September 15-16, 2008 in Savannah, Georgia. Of particular note was the announcement that NDGPS will continue. Funding is still a challenge, but the powers that be have decided that NDGPS, like GPS, is ....Read the Article
Point to Point: Relatively Speaking
Sooner or later it happens: one of your friends or relatives asks you to survey their property, or otherwise act professionally on their behalf. Is that all right or do we have a higher obligation to the public concerning impartiality? Although I have not conducted an exhaustive examination of the ....Read the Article
More Than a Simulation
When work such as land surveying requires precision and gets impacted by changing technology, it makes sense to be introduced to high-tech equipment on an actual project rather than on a simulation exercise or in a classroom setting. That runs counter to ... Read the Article
Optech Incorporated: The Lidar Company
In the early 70s, Dr. Allan Carswell, a physics professor at York University in Toronto, developed a pulsed laser system used in the world's first lidar bathymetric mapping system. Based on his research, Carswell founded Optech Incorporated in ...Read the Article
The Wow Factor: SmartWorx from Leica Geosystems
Every version of Leica Geosystems software contains user requested features. The latest product request that made the final cut was a "Field to Office" application. This full-featured FTP and transfer software is now built into the operating system of all System 1200 sensors, making it possible for ....Read the Article
Visualizing N G S Control Stations in Google Earth
Google Earth is rapidly becoming the land surveyor's tool-of-choice for preliminary job site reconnaissance and survey planning (see "Topography is Dead," by Joel Leininger, March 2007). Survey projects often begin with the investigation and ....Read the Article
Surv-Fi, Part 2: Boomer's Hearing
Stand back from the cradle Hector!" Vel warned her colleague. "You could receive a rather nasty static shock as it spins up!" Hector Fontecilla stood shivering in the still Chilean Patagonia morning awaiting instructions from Vel Kawashima. Ten thousand ...Read the Article
Tips & Tricks: Hidden Point Offset
Let's say it's 5:30 Friday afternoon and you're past ready to call it a week. You've just calculated the angle and distance to look for one of the last monuments you need to tie in. You turn the instrument to the angle and shoot a distance that measures just behind a tall tree. After a few minutes' search ...Read the Article
FeedBack
Wendy, quite possibly the best article ever written in a surveyor's journal ["If Not Now, When? Sept. 2008]. It matters not how technically proficient we are, how much money we make or how well "esteemed" we seem to be in our profession when we face serious illness or death. What do our friends and ...Read the Article
Vantage Point: Diversions in the Park
There is not a lot of unused land in our urban and increasingly suburban areas. It disappears under shopping centers and houses and roadways at a rate unimaginable a century ago. So it may not be unusual to start eyeing land that was set aside for parks and open space at ...Read the Article