Ever notice how you can shoot some monuments and so can 10 other people and they will all come up with different results?

I am of the opinion that it is impossible to take any measurement without a certain degree of error.

Remember the old days as an eyeman when you had that old crew breathing down your neck while you were rapping angles with the good old T2? There were times when I would rap 10 different sets because the mean closure was not good enough.

Fortunately I was honest. I used to be so good with these angles that I could give a false reading so the crew chief would move along. It's all simple math when you think about it.

Which brings me to the point of all of this.

Today's newbies have zero clue what it really means to measure. They will never know a chain for what it really is, they will most likely never rap angles and most likely never run 3 wire levels. Yes there are some exceptions depending on where they work and what they are doing.

So my questions is what will became of the basic fundamentals of survey measurements? 

Is the robot or total station more accurate than the GPS? I think absolutely in verticals. Horizontal who knows? I will tell you that I often use steady sticks with the gps, especially when obtaining control and I let it cook a little longer, at least 30 senconds.

There was a time in my life when all we did was run level loops all day long. Yes that's right youngsters loops.

The guy that I spoke about a couple of posts back Howie went to some on site welders and had them make these turn plates that were made of 3/8" steel with bolts in the top and those were the turn plates that we toted from station to station and then back again and again. They had 3 angled legs, were 6 inches tall and then the bolt and were about a foot by a foot and we would drop them and then stomp them in. They weight about 20 pounds each.

We ran some tight stuff and if we checked in over 5 thousandths we did it again. Why? I'm not sure.

I am wondering if the newbies know how to read a rod to the thousandth or if they even know to rock the rod? I'm sure some do.

When I was with Howie he made us use a calibrated deluxe rod bubble and only a 2 section wood rod.

I am wondering how many know how to run levels up and down hills and keep the turns balanced?
Simple. You and the rod man stay exactly 100 feet apart and parallel on the slope and work your way up and down.

Anyone pre 90's probably knows this.

I find it amazing that different companies can shoot the same section with the same character in monuments and come up with significant different results. Tenths, not hundreths. I actually think part of it may be an incorrect grid to ground scale factor. But who knows. It could just be a case of lazy head up ass.

So what is actually happening to measurements? Are they improving though technology or getting worse from button pushers that have zero idea of the basics?

It's a good question.

What say you??

Make it a great week surveyors.

In the post below I mention a rail road issue in which I developed the center by a series of 3 points arcs.

Since I am a diligent research monkey I kept digging and finally found a document with a definite radius call on the south right of way. Yes there are spirals but one course goes through my entire project area.

I jumped all over it, added 33 feet to it for center, drew it in on my points and that thing fit amazingly well.

The client loses another tenth or so to the RR, but I felt all warm and fuzzy knowing that I had something definite to work with.

I would have stood by my first method had this document not been recovered, however it is nice when something pops up that truly brings it all together.

Last week I got a tricky boundary survey in the door.

This particular boundary is in an old industrial area and has a Rail Road on a portion of the north.
I asked one of my contract guys who lives a lot closer to go out and shoot the section on Sunday morning because this is in a very high traffic area.

Upon receipt of the data I immediately dove in head first.
I pulled maps and documents and I also received a description and some easement doc’s from the client. No title report seemed to exist but they got all of the paper work from the city in which they are thinking of purchasing the 2 lots.

The description was partially written in Rods and it made some very distinctive calls that were just not adding up according to my section breakdown.
I did some further review on some very old subdivisions in the area and quickly discovered some non-nominal  1/16th corners that everyone since the dawn of time has been using.

So I jumped in the truck and went out to do my own search and destroy mission.

The first thing I discovered is that the 1/16 corner is not on the mid-section line. The next thing I discovered is the 1/16 to the west which is an old pipe (which is in character with plats) is still there and checks awesome to the brass cap in hand hole 1/16 that is previously noted as a stone.  Oh, the pipe lands in the railroad right of way between the main line and a spur.

Right then I jumped all over those 2 monuments and started running around the subject boundary and man stuff started fitting like no one’s business.

I found some monuments in character with some older surveys and it all started fitting together.
I brought it back to the office, tossed it into cad and re-calc’d it all and soon discovered that the North East corner is clipped by the Rail Road right of way.

I am sure that no one has really ever considered this one, upon looking at all of the documents anyway. So now here we are with that little thing. It only takes a tiny chunk that should never make a difference to anyone.

The track is funky as well. (I love straight track!!). It is in a curve or I should say a series of curves. I could stand there a see that it was obviously multiple curves, most likely spirals.
I took a bunch of center shots all the way past the tangent and in the office I drew a bunch of 3 point arcs and then offset the 33 foot half right of way.
There is a map that is quite illegible but I could still make out the 33 feet and adjoining plats confirmed it.
I will do some more research before making a final determination on that North East corner. I think I have buttoned up but want to be sure.

I like these kind of jobs. It's what makes surveying good and breaks up the day to day drag of the same old stuff.

Just the fact that this thing was written partially in Rods makes it unique along with the obviously long history behind the 1/16 corners.

Make it a great week surveyors.

I was on a job site Saturday morning and I got to talking with this mason that I have known for a bit. He is in my age bracket and we starting talking about the old days when everyone was not so sensitive, people settled things with fists, we could call each other names and ride the green horns hard and then drink beer together at the end of the day and all that real cool stuff of days gone by.

It was a great talk. It reminded me of all the Cowboys and Oldsters that schooled me and would not survive in today's work place.

Below is a story that I first posted in 2011. It's about a guy that used to ride me like a donkey, give me shit from sun up to sun down and then buy the beer. Enjoy.



This is about Howie.

I was thinking the other day about this guy, one of my first crew chiefs, he went by a certain name but when I found out his middle name was Howard I immediately dubbed him Howie. (He hated it).

Howie was a nasty son of a bitch.  He chewed Copenhagen, smoked generic cigarettes and drank coffee all day. At night it was a 6 pack of Old Style and the cheapest TV diner he could find. He was a connoisseur of prostitutes and had the clap 11 times that he knew of.

He would go to Saudi Arabia for 2 year stretches and sleep in the back of his Land Rover to avoid housing bills and then vacation in Thailand every 6 months, get baked out on Thai stick and bang hookers for 2 weeks, hence the clap so many times.

He carried a 270 behind the seat of the truck just in case he saw a wild burro. He would shoot them on site claiming that they would pull out stakes. (Note: This is true, I have had it happen and they set them neatly over a hill and crapped on the nails.) I suspect that he was part burro himself that’s why he hated them so much.

He avidly hated anyone that worked in the office and referred to them as “office pukes”, he had zero use for anyone wearing a white hard hat or white shirt and was convinced that anyone that wanted to work in an office had a vagina.

While he was all of this, he was an awesome field surveyor (only) and passed his LS the first time. (Early 70’s)
This nasty Mofo made me tough. I was already pretty tough and still am but he would go out of his way to make things very hard on me. He was an agitator. He would mess with your physical and mental status, he had a way of making a person continually question themselves, therefore I became a check freak. I still am.
He had a method to his madness and his training. Those with a weak mind or the PC pussies of today would have never made it with him. They would have quit and cried to mommy.  I actually witnessed people quit on the spot because of him.

Bottom line is that he made people good surveyors. That was his main goal with youngsters and he accomplished it well. He was a living breathing survey machine and he wanted to teach. He loved it, but only on his terms.

Today, he would be written up, fired, sued and have the book thrown at him.
But that won’t happen because one day he was on vacation with his mail order Philippine wife in an undisclosed location, he smiled at her and dropped dead from a massive heart attack. Death was quick for the old surveying donkey.

If you were on his good side he would treat you well after hours (I was), but on the job it was take no prisoners. If you were on his bad side you were total shit and he wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire.
Speaking of fire he had an eye-man burn one of his trucks to the ground. Imagine how the rest of the time those 2 spent together was. My question is: how the hell do you accidently torch a truck?? What goes through your brain before and during that??

I know a lot of you my age and older were brought up by similar guys of the older generation. I personally loved these old guys. They were tough and the work ethic was hardcore.

I would love to be able to send these new/young guys back in a time machine and give them 6 months of Howie. They would come back much better having done it.

So let’s all take a moment to remember the guys that trained us. Good, bad or ugly, we all learned a lot.
Because of them, I am who I am today, just a whole bunch more refined.