American Surveyor Vol 8 No 1 Articles Posted

Editorial: Good Records
Old photos and family albums tell stories that few of us ever take the time to put into words. My wife's family was fortunate to have several ancestors who were good writers. They left behind stories, rich in detail, describing their lives in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the struggles they faced ....
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Rainier—The Unforgiving Mountain Why has the Land Surveyors Association of Washington (LSAW) mounted repeated expedi tions to measure and remeasure Mount Rainier? Along with some very practical reasons--serving geosciences, geodesy, gravimetry, and public safety--this .... Read the Article

Using the Lynx Mobile Mapper to Survey a Levee In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast of the United States, leaving in its wake an unprecedented loss of life and property damage. Among the critical infrastructure the storm impacted was the levee system that controls the .... Read the Article

GIS Matters: Convert CAD Data to GIS Surveyors have been using Computer Aided Drafting/Design (CAD) for decades to draft surveys and to do design. As society becomes more spatially conscious, the ability to integrate data with geographic information systems data increases and is now to the point where CAD-GIS ... Read the Article

Product Review: MicroSurvey CAD 2010 Ultimate "Good!" Step. Step. Step. Plumb the pole. Beep . . . beep . . . beep. "Good!" So goes the familiar rhythm of any one of a thousand topographic surveys on any given day. Each month, surveying magazines are filled with images of point clouds from laser scans. And each month the average practicing ... Read the Article

Conference Review: Moving Forward—2010 Leica Geosystems HDS Worldwide User Conference This year's Leica HDS User Conference once again raised the bar for return on investment in terrestrial 3D laser scanning conferences. With attendance approaching 300, up some ... Read the Article

Model Behavior: The How-To Guide to Successful Surface Modeling, Part 5 Welcome back! In my last article I stated that the next installment of this discussion would examine some field techniques to help create more accurate base models, but I will cover that topic at a later time .... Read the Article

Vantage Point: The Latest "Gate"
My township taxes will probably be going up, and maybe you can gain a business lesson from my pain. Call it "Webcam-gate". Many businesses have formal policies regarding personal activities on business time. This includes phone calls to friends, family, doctors' offices, and the bank. It also ...
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Vol.7 No.6 Article Posted

Editorial: Maps as a Metaphor
"I know this world is ruled by infinite intelligence. Everything that surrounds us--everything that exists--proves that there are infinite laws behind it. There can be no denying this fact. It is mathematical in its precision." There are many surveyors and mappers and members of the precision community who concur with these words of Thomas Edison. Economy, too, hangs on immutable laws. One of the ....Read the Article

Measuring a Caribbean Disaster On January 12, 2010, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck the city of Port-au-Prince, the capital and largest city of Haiti. Tens of thousands of buildings collapsed, and more than 200,000 people died in the disaster. Earthquakes are not unexpected in Haiti. The country sits astride several fault lines, among them the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault ....Read the Article

3D-Laser Scanning and Surveying Collide LandAir Surveying started business in 1988 performing site surveys and topographic surveys for contractors in Georgia and surrounding states with two survey crews and a total staff of less than 10. By 1998 the firm expanded to surveying cell tower sites for the telecommunications industry (more than 3,000 sites in four years) using ...Read the Article

Another Triumph! He's done it again. Javad Ashjaee has released an impressive state-of-the-art product that enables surveyors to expand their GNSS capabilities. On June 29, 2010 Javad unveiled the Triumph VS at the company's 40,000 square foot newly designed headquarters and JAVAD EMS boardmanufacturing facility in San Jose, California. Over the decades ...Read the Article

Product Review: Hemisphere GPS R220 One of the recent trends in precision GPS manufacturing is the enclosed, fully integrated receiver. This is no doubt in response to market demands by surveyors in the field for gear that offers more durability and less complexity in setting up and getting to work. This trend has certainly offered surveyors many benefits, however, it has also ushered in a few limitations. For instance, many of these ...Read the Article

Comprehensive Collection Recording the location, dimensions and physical attributes of every piece of equipment constituting rural utilities throughout the United States might seem like a tall order. But information tools used to build a GIS have advanced so much in recent years that the endeavor is not only possible, but plausible. Great Falls, Montana-based GeoNav Group International, Inc. recently acquired the technology to pull ....Read the Article

Feedback Doing a Proper Job: I have a better reason for the legal profession insisting on a metes and bounds descriptions for dependent resurveys than clerk mentality or ancient check lists. In his article "Rewriting Legal Descriptions" [Vol. 7, Num. 4], Gary Kent's example of "the most egregious example of description rewriting is the preparation of a metes and bound description for a property that is a lot in ...Read the Comments

Vantage Point: "Just" What?
Several months ago my husband and I were working on a rail to trail conversion in our neighborhood, digging out debris and planting trees. At one point I was separating the junk found in the digging process from the recyclable beer cans and glass bottles when someone walked up and started talking to me. With my head still down, in the midst of trying to subdue a long strand of barbed wire into a ...Read the Article

The American Surveyor Vol 7 No 3 Articles Posted

Editorial: SPAR 2010
Under the banner of Innovate, Connect & Learn, the seventh annual SPAR laser scanning conference was held in Houston in February. In comparison to attendance in 2009, which had decreased slightly from the previous year to 630, attendance this year roared back to nearly 800. Of these ....Read the Article

SMART Surveying Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) is an overwhelmingly popular rail initiative in Northern California. Measure Q had an amazing 70% support of the two county (Sonoma-Marin) SMART District. One reason for voter enthusiasm is that SMART promises to be relatively ....Read the Article

Ashtech Comes Full Circle: An interview with François Erceau They're back! While the name Ashtech may sound new to younger folks in the precise community, its corporate predecessors, Ashtech, Thales and Magellan have ... Read the Article

Whose Footsteps Are They? The Journey to the Center Quarter Corner The center quarter corners of the Public Land Survey System are the topic of many heated discussions between surveyors. Some say the center quarter can exist only at the intersection of ...Read the Article

The Birthplace of VRS Today, Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) networks are becoming commonplace. There is at least a small RTK network (or multiple RTK networks) in every state of the U.S., some with full statewide coverage. Internationally, many countries boast nationwide networks. All have been developed within a whirlwind decade since the introduction of the ....Read the Article

Infected with Surveying: A ProFile of Dick Elgin Dick Elgin comes by his surveying "roots" honestly. Raised in his late parents' "Mom and Pop" surveying business, as with so many of us, surveying got into his blood early in life and has yet to leave. This rare combination of surveying practitioner, researcher, educator, author and ....Read the Article

Vantage Point: Ripple Effects Above and Below The most popular saying around one office I worked in was, "You can have anything you want, but you have to pay the price." Both clients and employees heard it frequently. But it applies to life on a broader scale as well, affecting many aspects of the world we live in. One of ...Read the Comments

Network News
Earl Dudley, Inc. saw the benefits of a reference station network early on. Now, nearly a decade after their first station, they are seeing a lot of new converts to the technology. Equipment suppliers in a broad range of fields can often go years without a change in their product offering. Not ...Read the Article

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

October articles posted

Editorial: Intergeo 2009
We recently attended Intergeo in Karlsruhe, Germany. Billed as the world's most important surveying congress, this year's show attracted more than 16,000 attendees--22 percent from outside Germany--and 475 exhibitors. For years, we've heard how nice it would be if we had a large show here in ....Read the Article

Rebuilding the Greens at The Olympic Club Lake Course The history of San Francisco's Olympic Club dates back to 1860, making it one of the oldest such golf clubs in the country. The club has hosted four US Open tournaments over the years ­with its fifth slated for 2012 ­and the Lake Course enjoys certain notoriety. It has no ....Read the Article

Verdict at the Little Bighorn There probably aren't many people alive today who have never heard of the name of Lt. Col. (Bvt. Maj. Gen.) George Armstrong Custer. Probably even fewer have never heard of the battle that made him famous (or infamous, depending on who is telling the story) ­the Battle of the ... Read the Article

USGS Quadrangles in Google Earth QUADS (http://www.metzgerwillard.us/quads/) is a web-based service for visualizing USGS quadrangles in Google Earth that provides an easy-to-use framework for retrieving geo referenced PDF topo maps from the USGS Store. QUADS also includes USGS, or USGS derived, overlays ...Read the Article

Software Review: Magellan Professional ProMark500 RTK It's nice to pick up a piece of equipment that works right out of the box. That was my experience with the Magellan Professional ProMark500 RTK system. Building on the blade technology that made the ProMark3 RTK system such a capable L1-only RTK system, the ProMark500 is a full-on GNSS receiver, able to receive both ....Read the Article

Vantage Point: On the Waterfront­—or Not Those who have deeds citing frontage on a body of water are very protective of that frontage. When natural phenomena such as avulsion, alluvium, or erosion change the physical proximity of a land parcel to water, we are generally familiar with the effect on boundaries. Of course rights along water boundaries are....Read the Article

Reconnaissance: Retracement Surveys and Undocumented Corners (Part 1 of 2) Recently I was dismayed by a discussion thread on one of the surveying bulletin boards that related to the perpetuation of a section corner and an undocumented monument that appeared to be marking that corner. The thread started with a posting that referred to a "monument" (a nail) that was found ostensibly marking a public ... Read the Article

A Walk In The Park
On a sunny day in the middle of May, two survey colleagues and I spent the day in Muskego Park along with five advanced high school math students. This was the second year the program was presented to a group of students. Our goal was to show them that there are every day practical applications for math. We had ...Read the Article

September articles posted

Editorial: Intergeo 2009 We recently attended Intergeo in Karlsruhe, Germany. Billed as the world's most important surveying congress, this year's show attracted more than 16,000 attendees--22 percent from outside Germany--and 475 exhibitors. For years, we've heard how nice it would be if we had a .... Read the Article

Rebuilding the Greens at The Olympic Club Lake Course The history of San Francisco's Olympic Club dates back to 1860, making it one of the oldest such golf clubs in the country. The club has hosted four US Open tournaments over the years -with its fifth slated for 2012 -and the .... Read the Article

Verdict at the Little Bighorn There probably aren't many people alive today who have never heard of the name of Lt. Col. (Bvt. Maj. Gen.) George Armstrong Custer. Probably even fewer have never heard of the battle that made him famous (or infamous, depending on ... Read the Article

USGS Quadrangles in Google Earth QUADS (http://www.metzgerwillard.us/quads/) is a web-based service for visualizing USGS quadrangles in Google Earth that provides an easy-to-use framework for retrieving georeferenced PDF topo maps from the USGS Store. QUADS also ... Read the Article

Hardware Review: Magellan Professional ProMark500 RTK It's nice to pick up a piece of equipment that works right out of the box. That was my experience with the Magellan Professional ProMark500 RTK system. Building on the blade technology that made the ProMark3 RTK system such a capable L1-only RTK system, the .... Read the Article

Vantage Point: On the Waterfront--or Not Those who have deeds citing frontage on a body of water are very protective of that frontage. When natural phenomena such as avulsion, alluvium, or erosion change the physical proximity of a land parcel to water, we are generally familiar with the effect on boundaries. Of.... Read the Article

Reconnaissance: Retracement Surveys and Undocumented Corners (Part 1 of 2) Recently I was dismayed by a discussion thread on one of the surveying bulletin boards that related to the perpetuation of a section corner and an undocumented monument that appeared to be ... Read the Article

A Walk In The Park On a sunny day in the middle of May, two survey colleagues and I spent the day in Muskego Park along with five advanced high school math students. This was the second year the program was presented to a group of students. Our goal was to show them that there are ... Read the Article

April/May articles posted

Editorial: SPAR 2009 and the Carlson User Conference
The American Surveyor has covered a whole lot of territory since our last issue! As part of a second road trip, I attended both SPAR 2009 conference in Denver and the 2nd Annual Carlson User Conference in Lexington, Kentucky, with a quick trip out to Logan, Utah in between (more on that leg of the .... Read the Article

WowFactor: SOKKIA Mobile Reference Station As GPS has been adopted by surveyors, its proven benefits­higher productivity and efficiency­have been recognized. The unfortunate tradeoff to these benefits remains the high system cost of a traditional base and rover setup. To reduce the costs of GPS surveying, many countries have installed a permanent RTK infrastructure which .... Read the Article

A Model Home For NASA's New Space Telescope NASA commissioned construction of an environmental simulation test chamber which was completed in 1964 at Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas. The facility, Chamber A, was invaluable for testing spacecraft and satellites before deployment to space. By testing spacecraft in an environment similar to ... Read the Article

John Austin Survey To become an owner of land in 1824 under Mexican law one had to do certain things­pay a fee, take possession of the land, perform certain rites, and reside on and cultivate the land for a minimum of two years (this also meant defending one's life and properties against any war parties of ... Read the Article

Conference Review: GNSS - Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? - Part 1 A December 2008 meeting hosted by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California brought together not only the "Big 3" GNSS constellation providers but the new kids on the block as well, driving home the point that while GNSS may be "worldy" by nature it is getting "worldier" (if I can coin a term) by the .... Read the Article

Equipment Review: JAVAD GNSS Triumph-1 In the world of precision GPS, Javad Ashjaee continues to push the industry ahead with new technologies and new options. With roots that date back to the early days of Trimble Navigation, Javad was integral to the creation of the first combined GPS/ GLONASS system. More than a decade ago he was .... Read the Article

Direct Reflex vs. Standard Prism Measurements Upon reading Mr. Pepling's product review of the Spectra Precision Focus 10 in the October 2008 issue, I took notice to one of the paragraphs on page 52. Mr. Pepling, and hopefully others, thought it would be interesting to see the results of a test comparing traditional prism measurements to ... Read the Article

Field Notes: Contemplating Cooley Rules for retracing the subdivision of sections are well and good provided the rules were followed in the first place. Sometimes they were not. If you have already made that discovery for yourself, my story will sound familiar. If you have not, read on anyway. With a job like this it's better to live ... Read the Article

Vantage Point: Mapping the Zone
In March of 2007, the National Academies/National Research Council (NRC) informed me that I had been provisionally accepted as a member of "the National Research Council's Committee on FEMA Flood Maps: Accuracy Assessment and Cost-Effective Improvements". The first official meeting of ... Read the Article