Volume 7, Number 7 Articles Posted

Make Me a Map of the Valley
Under clear skies and warmer than normal temperatures, nearly 100 people gathered for the 14th annual Surveyors Rendezvous. Guests were treated to an extraordinary three-night stay onboard the legendary Delta Queen steamboat. Designated as a National Historic Landmark with more than two million miles of maritime history beneath her bow, the Delta Queen is now one of Chattanooga's most ....Read the Article

Digitizing the Legacy "We are missing data on Washington's brow and cravat." "Even with the data from the scans on the talus slope?" "The angle is just too steep. We have to use the rig." "What about the scans from Lincoln, or the chins?" Two clicks brought up a different modelspace. "No,the angle was too oblique to catch the front of Washington." "We designed the rig to ....Read the Article

Machine Control: Lessons Learned I am continually asked about the opportunities for land surveyors in the machine control market and I have written a couple past articles about these opportunities. But I am more curious about what the next trend is for machine control. What else is over the horizon that we haven't seen yet? What can land surveyors do to help fill the void that machine control has left in our revenues? Being involved in ... Read the Article

Not What, but Where is Qibla? Back in the Spring of 2009, we received a routine request from one of our finer regular clients to perform a routine boundary and topographic survey. Sporting a brick rancher, the property backed up to an interstate highway, fronting on a somewhat secluded road but less than a mile from one of Tennessee's largest shopping malls. We completed the ...Read the Article

OPUS-DB and Uncertainty Testing The Conrad Blucher Institute for Surveying and Science at Texas A&M University--Corpus Christi conducted a research project with the National Park Service (NPS) and National Geodetic Survey (NGS) to determine the heights of five peaks in the Guadalupe Mountains. This mountain range is located in West Texas near its border with New Mexico ...Read the Article

Vantage Point: Safety or Fraud? About six years ago, as I chatted with a client as he drove us through northeastern Missouri to visit a work site, the inevitable questions of origins arose. Mine is a complicated tale of a family on the move from coast to coast, but his was simpler: "I'm from a small town in Pennsylvania I'm sure you've never heard of, Centralia." I turned toward him in sudden surprise and replied, "Oh, I know where that ....Read the Article

Feedback More on Apprenticeship. I have been following the discussions about this subject at various locations and in many forms for many years now. In Dave Gibson's article "Licensure by Apprenticeship: Effects on the Surveying Profession" [Vol 7, Issue 4], he makes some good points. However, what I find difficult to accept about most of the opinions I have heard is that the argument seems to be always ...Read the Comments

Surveyors Report: Making the Most of the Recession
The Barnett Shale, the second largest producing onshore domestic natural gas field in the US, stretches over North Texas. It is still actively being discovered. Young and Associates Surveying and Mapping, LLC was formed in 2007 as the Barnett Shale was booming for natural gas exploration. As land surveyors who specialize in this niche market, we were in an optimal position to step in and step up ...
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November/December articles posted

Guest Editorial: CGSIC Highlights
To state simply that the pool of GPS users has grown rapidly would be a gross understatement; more like a flood of biblical proportions. This flood is proving to be an epic challenge for the constellation providers to manage with regards to addressing needs and concerns of .... Read the Article

Eye In The Sky: A Visit to GeoEye Fom August 1960, when a capsule containing exposed film from the first classified military reconnaissance satellite was parachuted back to Earth, to present day 2009, when better than half-meter satellite imagery is available to .... Read the Article

Reconnaissance: Retracement Surveys and Undocumented Corners (Part 2 of 2) The original surveyor initiates the establishment of the corner and monuments it. In the case of a USPLSS corner, the acceptance of the deputy surveyor's plat locks in the corner. In the case of ... Read the Article

Vantage Point: "Scope Creep" and Other Illegal Activities There are days when it seems to be dangerous to be in business (although the alternatives are scary in a different way). We need to track our work in so many ways, including compliance with contractual arrangements and paying attention to the ultimate impact of our work. The Army ... Read the Article

10 Things I've Learned I recently retired from a medium sized engineering consulting firm. I had been with this firm for over 35 years. I started there when I graduated from the finest engineering school in the world, The University of Maryland, College Park. My career at this firm was a terrific experience. I made a .... Read the Article

Tennessee's Chimney I think it was Christmas you said rumor had it the surveyors were drunk on the Tennessee/Kentucky line around the land between the rivers. There's something I need to tell you. All across this great country, state lines are really, really .... Read the Article

Product Review: Altus APS-3 A few short years ago it appeared that the precision GPS equipment manufacturing market was going to be controlled by just three or four companies. Mergers, acquisitions and partnerships consolidated the market at a rapid pace, with no new companies entering the ... Read the Article

Model Behavior: The How-To Guide to Successful Surface Modeling, Part 3
Back for more? Welcome to the third installment in a series where we are discussing the exciting world of digital terrain modeling! As you have experienced in the marketplace, it is no longer enough to simply ... Read the Article

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

April/May Articles Posted

Editorial: The Wow Factor
I recently attended a reception hosted by Loyola Spatial Systems at the annual Virginia Association of Surveyors' conference. Loyola is a great example of a well-run entrepreneurial company that has capitalized on the RTN boom [see "RTK-Net Entrepreneurs" in our June 2007 issue]. At the reception, Loyola unveiled a new web app they developed that will allow asset owners to ....Read the Article

Reconnaissance: The Stories They Tell Over the years of traveling to most of these United States and talking to or otherwise corresponding with hundreds of surveyors in virtually every state, I have come across a wide variety of interesting and humorous documents. Some of them I share off and on in my presentations, others not, but many of them deserve to see the light of day. As Dave Barry famously writes....Read the Article

The Wow Factor: Loyola's RTK-Net Management Portal As part of its newly-released Management Portal and GPS Work Day Planning Center, Loyola now provides Real Time Connection Logs to their customers. A map function is included that uses Google Maps to plot the location of GPS rovers that have been connected to RTK-Net®. This exclusive feature is ...Read the Article

Bad Pass Archaeology The Bad Pass Trail runs for miles along the western side of rugged Bighorn Canyon in southern Montana and northern Wyoming. Today it consists of numerous rock piles or cairns, which once helped guide travelers along the treacherous canyon country. People also left behind rocks that once held down the bottoms of...Read the Article

Rapid Surveyor: Mapping the built environment and beyond Today, we live in a world where the trend is to have the latest or the best currently available gadget, be that a humble MP3 player, a digital camera or a cell phone. While this trend is most likely quite obvious to users of consumer level electronics, it should be noted that it is also a trend that is reflected in many ....Read the Article

RTN­101: Network Geometry­Design Meets Reality (Part 12) "We will never be an advanced civilization as long as rain showers can delay the launching of a space rocket."--George Carlin The best design principles and best intentions may initially drive RTN design, but certain realities rule in the end. Ultimately the test of functionality reigns supreme. Most RTNs have...Read the Article

Equipment Review: Leica System 1200 (Part 2 of 2) The Smart Antenna is a lightweight device that includes a GPS/GLONASS (GG models) or GPS-only antenna and receiver. For connectivity, it includes a wireless Bluetooth port, a LEMO port, and a clip port for attaching to the TPS1200+ Smart Station handle. It is powered by the ...Read the Article

Software Review: Prefiniti from Center Line Services Bob Stevenson, a well-known and respected New Mexico surveyor*, once told me that a surveyor could make good money doing lot and block surveys for title companies. I thought he was probably right, but at the time survey inspection reports, or whatever they are called in your area, were equivalent to ...Read the Article

Vantage Point: Just Say "No"
Early December 2007 newspapers carried an article entitled, "Scotsman Says `No' to Trump". It seems "The Donald" had approached Michael Forbes to buy his 23-acre farm and was told that the land was not for sale at any price. Apparently the offer of $750,000, "well above market value", was not enough to...Read the Article

Carlson Silver Anniversary User Conference

I attended this event earlier this week (the only survey magazine to do so), and I must say I was quite impressed. More than 350 attendees, and more than 80 educational sessions, most of which carried CEU credit. I learned more about Carlson's products in two days than in all the years I've been writing about the company! This is a company that really believes in customer feeback. I'll do a recap of the conference in my June editorial. Meanwhile, I've posted my photographs of the keynote speakers here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amerisurv/