TeamGatorade

I used to work as a contractor for the FAA for about 11 years, upgrading their remote communications sites, and building new airport airtraffic control towers, and other nav/comm facilities. I will see if I can get a hold of one of my friends in the Nav/Comm Facilites section of the regional office here in the seattle area. I know I've seen drawings of some of these beacons in their drawing files. I also just saw where geocacher M&M found the Rattlesnake Mountain Air Beacon benchmark, SX1318, and said it is still there and maintained by a local electical company. I'll contact them and see if I can get them to take me up there and get some pictures of it and hopefully the concrete arrow. If I do, I'll post here and at the benchmark listing.

Their building a bunch of new apartments right around there. The access road in the description is gone. I figured there probably was a sub-surface monument, but didn't figure I should go digging it up just for our little hunt/find database. Leave it for the big boys that need to use the things. So....is that a found, but not found? Suppose I can't log it as anything, either way, eh? []

when I worked as a contractor for the FAA and we went around to all their remote communications sites, which in some cases were at these old FSS's that hadn't been torn down yet, because the FAA was using them as a RCO or RCAG site. I'll have to go back and look through all my photos and see if I got a picture of one of those arrows, and old beacon towers. I know I climbed up one of those old, rickety, shaky things, and swore I wasn't ever climbing up anothe one again.

Great! And I always thought that was just called the train signal....lol. Anyway, that wasn't at this station anymore either. But I guess if the concrete signal box wasn't there, then this semaphore probably wouldn't be there either, since the signal box probably controlled the semaphore. Thanks for the help. I'm a newbie at this, (just finally found my first one), and didn't have much luck today finding these things. Finally found three that were along the railroad tracks. Guess they don't move or widen those as often as they do the roadways...lol

Description of a station near the highway says something about a "fog line". What is a fog line? How do I recognize it. I used to work on the flight line in the military and never could find any of that darn line, whenever they sent me to look for it...lol

Went looking for a couple of BM's around town that were monumented in 69, (SY1970 and SY1971) and no record of ever been recovered, as well as one that was monumented in 88, and was supposed to be right at the corner of the overpass, SY5606). After spending about 30 minutes looking for SY5606, I realized I was probably never going to find it. The reason...in 1988, Highway 18 was still only two lanes, with one two lane overpass, and Highway 516, (Kent-Kangley road), was still only a two lane road. Highway 18 is now four lanes through here, with two, two-lane overpass bridges, and Kent-Kangley is now two lanes each direction, with a center turn lane. There is no witness post. The catch basin here now is huge, and on the other side of the overpass from the description. 8.2 feet south of the north end of the bridge guard rail has me on the side of the overpass embankment. Coordinates have me standing up in the median of the highway, between the two overpasses, but there is no catch basin, guard rail or witness post anywhere around. My question is does anyone think I'm not looking in the right place yet, or that it probably doesn't exist anymore since both roads and the intersection and the overpasses have been built and/or widened since 1988? Basically the same question I have for SY1970 and SY1971, which were monumented in 69, but never recovered since, and 180th/WAX road has been widened considerably, with all the telephone and power poles removed and replaced. So how do I find it now? Coordinates took me right to a newer (last 10 years) power pole, but there were no witness post, or monuments around that I could find. Think they still exist, or I'm wasting my time?

Need a little help from some of you people that have been doing this awhile, since I am just getting started. Went out looking for SY1991 this morning, because it was little more than a stones throw across Highway 18 from me. Long story short...not sure if I found it or where it was supposed to be. I found transmission tower #1, (had the sign on tower), and I think I found the concrete monument that is supposed to have a disk in the top of it, but it doesn't. I'm pretty sure this is the correct slap of concrete, since it was 22 feet south of the north tower leg, and 32.1 feet east of the west tower leg, like the description says. My question is according to the description there should be another disk about 3 feet down. Does that mean that it is buried (cemented) in the concrete? If so, how can one verify this is the BM? I posted a couple of pics with my note on this BM, if that helps anyone.

Came across "semaphore" in a description of a BM near a railroad track and don't have the foggiest idea what a sema is for, or what it looks like...any help would be appreciated.

I think the problem is with the code. I noticed that I can be receiving good satellite signals, (full solid black bars), and then all of a sudden the satellites disappear, but the bars stay there. And it seems to take forever to lock on to position, even on bright, clear blue, unobstucted skys, sometimes... I mean, I will be standing out in the middle of the yard, and have good signals, and all of a sudden, all the satellites disappear and I've lost all of them again. Maybe one or two, but not eight of them at once. Magellen must have a clock snyc problem with this new code.

I didn't really notice much wrong with my Meridian gold when I first got it, but noticed there was an update (4.02) available so I loaded it. After that it seemed like my gold took longer to acquire position fixes; had trouble holding satelites and seem to loose the signal more. I now get strange satellite displays. It will show 3, 4, sometimes 5 or more full hollow bars, indicating it is acquiring data from those satellites, and the signal is strong enought that I have full bars. Then all of a sudden, the satellites all disappear, but the bars, which have turned solid black now, are still there at full strength. Where are the satellites? Seems to me there is some timing and sync issues with this 4.02 code. Anyone else have or notice the same indications? I actually took the first gold back because I thought it was faulty, but after loading the code in the second one, and it doing the same thing, I guess there is nothing wrong with the gpsr, it's probably a software code problem.