Last week I had to do some quantities on varies material piles in the west valley.

I arrived at the site with the impression that there were 8 to 16 individual piles and the quantities were for inventory not a sale and had to be approximate. Upon arrival I was informed that there were 26 piles.

Good thing I brought one of my contract guys. We just kind of looked at each other and laughed, he took the north pit, I took the south pit and we blazed off with our gps's.

In 5 hours we were finished and had each taken 1000 + shots each. We were both a sweaty mess and I was out of gas. There were some massive piles and I ran my ass off.

I got back to the office, uploaded the data, defined the break lines and shipped it out to a trusted person who is way better at calculating that sort of thing than I.

I am thinking in the future I may try an imaging station on this sort of thing. Usually an instrument can be set up high enough to define the tops and the sides can be done from above or around them on traverse points.

Either way technology will become a factor. That is some hard ass work. I do like the idea of a laser scan, however a lot of outfits are still having a problem paying for that kind of thing especially when they either don't need that kind of accuracy or they don't care and there is the fact that it goes right away the second a bucket hits a pile.

Old school guys are smart and sometimes trying to get them to come up to modern times is a little tough, especially when me and my contract guy are going to do the job for a third to half of the cost as a laser.

I will keep trying to sell them on it and as time goes on and the cost drops it will be easier to do.

The other day I had to get some depths on some lakes in a gravel pit on the Salt River.

Many of you may remember the video I posted of me and Dane in the rubber boat and I was dropping a chain with a brick tied to the end to get depth. Check out the youtube page right side of this page.

This time I got a little smarter. I bought this cool little 1955 row boat and went and picked up a depth finder. 
I then went all MacGyver and fashioned a bracket made of framing strap and screwed it to the boat and then attached magnet setup to the depth finder transponder so I can slide it up and down on the strap to hit the water.

Then I dug through my shed and found an old triple magnet strip, actually a framing strap with 3 magents from stereo speakers that I used for the gps head on the truck roof and I also found an old bracket from when I had a Legacy E and had to keep the radio off of the head. I attached the bracket to the magnet strap, used C clamps and stuck it to the seat and had my gps attachement.

I dug a 12" rod out of the shed and screwed to the bracket, attached the head shoved off and went collecting.

I was able to take a bunch of shots while trolling along, looking at the finder and using the depth as my descriptor with good xyz and was able to provide the client with a much better reading of the lakes.

I could most likely do a full bathymetric in this manner it would just take quite a while. Fortunantly he did not want all of that.

I am thinking if this keeps up I may have to budget in some Hydrographic equipment to do a real bath.

Until that day this will work.

OK boys and girls it's July. I am going to take a month long blog break. 

I have an action packed month in front of me that include a lot of Biz meetings, birthdays (not mine) and a much needed vacation.

I will be on the beach with a constant BL in hand for a while.

I want to leave you with some good thoughts.

First never let anything get you down. Remember, Nothing can hurt you until you've done what you came here to do, no one can eat you and if they try fall back on the below pic.

Next it's beach season and no matter where you go or what you do life is what you make it.

Which one is it? Todd the lense killer? Or the line of Smokin Hottie's? Or is it all good?

 Enjoy your July!