MOCKBA

quote:Originally posted by flask:...does not seem to understand that where there are two marks near each other they are not interchangeable...cheerfully looking for a thing that he appeared to have found. Apparently professional surveyors also have this 'I found something, therefore it must be what I was looking for' attitude. Like an LA BM which I've recently found ( http://www.geocaching.com/mark/details.asp?PID=DY1731 ). What has been documented as a county BM is a larger, better visible CGS BM four feet away.

quote:Originally posted by TEAM 360:...How am I supposed to know I was next to a classified benchmark, if I don't know where it is? This is going along the same lines as archaeological dig sites that are secret... Just wanted to share an interesting link about the recent US moves to classify mapping of publicly documented artifacts. It's in today's Wash Post, take a look: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23689-2003Jul7.html

quote:Originally posted by Jeremy (Admin):If someone errs and logs a benchmark when they log a reference mark, etc, feel free to email them and let them know it has been incorrectly logged. To make it more intuitive and more ego-pleasing therefore acceptable, could we get an add'l log type, say 'Found hallmarks' or 'Found supporting elements'? Whenever the original BM wasn't documented but some unique adjacent objects were id'd correctly? I guess it's just hard for people to do a lot of physical and mental work and to find something interesting and not to log it as a find of a sort... Then it becomes a slippery slope. Like, for http://www.geocaching.com/mark/details.asp?PID=LO1058 , someone logged a find and I thought, if they could log *this*, I should do it too. The verbal description of LO1058 has an obvious error, and both of us took advantage of this error to claim that we've been there. It was almost a mile away in reality. But then it becomes a different question: 'If others use so relaxed standarts for logging finds, why not me, too?'

quote:Originally posted by survey tech:The cairn is probably centered over the original point. The signal pole is intended to be directly over the spot, serving the same purpose to the surveyor as a tower or spire, which is a good long distance target. I've seen the same at another old Utah BM recently, a rotten pole centered over a cross-marked copper bolt. But it appeared that while the bolt dates from 1880s, the pole is much more recent. Isn't this the case for Kanab BM too? Since the recovery of the 1933 found (quote) 'NO EVIDENCE OF ROCK MONUMENT OR WOOD TARGET'. What would be the right object for a geobenchmarker to document, then? Can one claim that this thing is 132 years old w/o identifying the original mark on the rock? OTOH can one do any 'archeological dig' at such a location? What might be the appropriate circumstances?

quote:Originally posted by TEAM 360:

quote:Originally posted by ArtMan:Do you happen to know if there are special purpose survey monuments - equivalent to U.S. benchmark disks - that one might happen upon while, say, strolling on the Arbat? Possibly so. Haven't seen an urban 'reper' (BM) ever. Looking them up on a topo map seems easier to me. The more recent designs are horizontal disks with a half-inch hole in the center, for mounting equipment (?). Posts with a small bar sticking out in the center are common, too. Repers would be marked with a word 'reper', its designation, authority (such as branch of govt. or surveying organization), and year, and usually a warning that it is a govt. property (don't remember the exact wording, everything around was a govt. property at the time, but it was some sort of a warning not to mess around with it, but unlike in the US, it wouldn't spell out how much that would cost :-).

quote:Originally posted by Zhanna:What do you know about surveying in Russia? Not much personal exposure except I liked climbing those rickety trig towers as a kid. And mapped the city streets with a compass and bicycle odometer, to correct the outcrying distortions on the commercially available maps of the time. They'll be celebrating 225 years of geodetic serivice in Russia next year. But any data equivalent to the US BM locations are classified (Decree of Roskartografiya N 181?? of 12/14/00 specifically lists as secret the locations of federal geodetic network, astronomical points, points of survey networks, references, and marks) (?????? ??????????????? ????????????? ????, ??????????????? ??????, ????? ????????? ?????, ?????? ? ????? ??????????????? ?????????? ?????) Caching OTOH may have been legalized recently. A decision of Federal Commission on Electric Comunications (????) #54 of 2/26/03 allows personal use of GPS and Glonass receivers, except for recording coordinates of objects which locations are explicitly classified ( http://www.gisa.ru/9169.html ) quote:How close is <Rechnoy> to Medvedkovo? Very close in music , ever heard Vysotsky's song mentioning 'Khimki and Medvedki' on the same line? May be 5 mi airline in reality, with the added challenge of crossing Savelovo RR line separating the two areas. [This message was edited by MOCKBA on July 01, 2003 at 09:36 AM.]

We are weering way offtrack, and straight into a location with no geocaching or benchmarking activity whatsoever []. quote:Originally posted by Zhanna the Impostor (no problem with this, I just 1st noticed the Queen notation late last night, was tired and drunk and indeed kind of dumbfounded) :the phrase "Nice place to visit, wouldn't want to live there" comes to mind... Why, I loved to live there, and would gladly do it again. Rechnoy is my old neighborhhod BTW. 'Course you can't climb a mountain after work if you live in Moscow, but there is plenty of good public lands to hike, mushroom, xc-ski, or orieenteer all around the city. It is just that the city has some NYC-like, disagreeable qualities. Like it may be obnoxious and unhelpful; rootless new power and new money rules; everybody seems to be a clueless new migrant, speeking with accents and bewildered by subway station names; and so on. Still love it dearly, just can't push it - it ain't for everybody to enjoy.

quote:Originally posted by ArtMan:...Slavic connection ...? Wow, not bad - where have you learned Cyrillics? quote:...suburban benchmarkers... Well it *is* a suburban location in the local contect. Grantsville is 20 minute commute to the big city office parks, and at 9200 ft elevation, Onaqui is probably the smallest of the mountains used by the transcontinental survey. Compare e.g. with Ibapah, a 12,000+ peak with the nearest gas station in almost 100 miles from the trailhead. quote:Originally posted by Zhanna:...I don't know of any connection... maybe rock and the Rockies? In truth, there is a connection between this thread, which made me think about the history and the technology of survey marks, and my decision to spend a couple of days looking for the Onaqui BM. I did spend almost 3/4 of my life in Moscow, not that I am a totally crazy fan of that city, but it is a distinction of sorts. And besides you can spell MOCKBA in Latin letters, and this is fun! But back to the rock. Weren't there just *one* queen Zhanna in Russian rock? Did I miss the coronation of Zhanna II anyhow? A puzzle for sure.

quote:Originally posted by COW PATTI:http://www.digitalborder.com/~artpike/helio4.htm Thanks, the map is great! I also found refs to the regular use of the heliographs only in NM/AZ. So I started digging in the books, trying to figure out where I read about it in the first place. Kelsey, Michael R. Utah Mountaineering Guide 3rd ed. pp. 194-195 It appears that Kelsey interpreted any remains of possible crew quarters at the highest summits of Utah as an indication that station crews were camped there. As a footnote, he writes that there may some doubts. He spoke with an elderly guy who ran suveys in Henry's Mtns in 1938, and who said that the walls and platforms on Mt. Ellen, in S Utah, didn't exist back then [?]. OTOH Mt. Ellen clearly had a crew stationed there in late summer of 1894, see http://htg-is.vianet.net/~artpike/helio7.htm Elsewhere it is claimed that 'In 1884 a heliograph station was placed on Navajo Mountain by U.S. troops under a Captain Thomas', that's on UT side of AZ border, and that in 1887 a station operated at Soldiers' Springs, on North Montezuma Creek, also in SE Utah. I couldn't find anything much about the Signal Corps operations in the Northern part of the state, even though quite a few people describe ruins on Nebo and Ibapah as former heliograph stations. *But* it looks likely that there was some heliography as a part of CGS operations! Citing from http://home.pacbell.net/harryla/harrypage/mountains.htm : "According to by Robert S. Waite's 1974 Ph.D. dissertation, it was in 1881 that the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey began work in the Great Basin on its transcontinental triangulation and reconnaissance survey work west of the 100th Meridian and along the 39th Parallel. High mountains such as Ibapah Peak, Mt. Nebo and Mt. Belknap in Utah; and Arc Dome, Troy Peak and Wheeler Peak in Nevada, were selected as working field stations. Part of the program was to set up and experiment with a mirrored signaling device called a heliograph, see http://209.35.211.132/hiking_outdoor_recreation_guidebook/nevada-great-basin.htm " So the circle may be closing, and the local heliograph stations may be actually the same as the benchmarks from the 1880's survey. I wish I could find a good confirmation for this.

quote:Originally posted by Zhanna:...NA1433 in Binghamton, NY, from 1898 Just found an interesting type of a benchmark which seems to be an immediate ancestor of these early disks. http://www.geocaching.com/mark/details.asp?PID=LP0487. It is a round metal marker with a cross mark, leaded into a rock 116 years ago. It is a part of the Transcontinental Survey, roughly along 39th parallel, of the 1880s, which used quite a few of these X-marked copper bolts along with more traditional cairns and posts.

The same prominent mountaintops in the West which contain some of the oldest benchmarks were also sites of the Signal Corps Heliograph stations. The system was put in place in the last quarter of the 19th century and used sunlight and mirrors to transmit Morse messages, often over 100+ miles in a single bang. One would often find remains of wooden signalling structures up there, inscriptions, etc. E.g. this 1887 copper bolt benchmark is described in the guidebooks as a Heliograph Station : http://www.geocaching.com/mark/details.asp?PID=KN0449 (I've seen it before I really started to care, and I wonder how I can tell between these two uses for a mountaintop) Does anybody know if there are any lists of old heliograph locations? There were supposed to be quite a few placed on other continents, too.