
68-eldo
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Posts posted by 68-eldo
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Learning Corel Draw by osmoses I believe there is a way to designate a certain color as transparent. If you make your background a particular shade of blue (or any other color you want) and designate it as transparent any thing that color will not show up when pasted onto another picture and the background shows through.
I have not done it myself but my wife does it all the time; and she likes to chatter about such stuff, hence I am learning Corel Draw by osmoses.
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The photo overlay of the map is great Papa-Bear. It says it all.
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Thanks DaveD, that makes sense that the later work was done with a digitizing table. I seem to see things like digitizing tables as new stuff. :-)
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Having watched the Quartermaster plotting the location of the ship while on watch on the bridge, I would imagine the actual scaling was done with dividers and not a ruler. One leg of the divider would be placed on the location of the benchmark and the other leg would be placed on the nearest lat or lon line on the chart (depending on which one you are scaling). Then the dividers would be moved to the side of the chart where the tic marks are and the coordinate read. Then the operation would be repeated for the other coordinate.
How did I do DaveD?
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OK, I’ll bite. Is that a real steam locomotive or is it powered by a diesel engine or something like that? I can see the wood stack in the tender is fake. I goggled it but can’t find anything on the locomotive.
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What I sometimes do is make the map an overlay on Google Earth. A topo map is relatively easy if you mark the location of the adjusted benchmarks first then massage the map until the benchmark on the map lines up with the ones on Google earth.
I did that with a 1938 Topo map and found out about a lot of history in my area. I have been puzzled about a bridge I found in a valley near my house. The bridge is dated 1929. But there were no roads going to it and I could not find it on any road maps. After creating the overlay I could see the bridge was where the plantation railroad branched off and crossed over the main line to climb out of the gulch to the fields on top.
I also made overlays out of old army aircraft landing maps. It’s amazing how many roads are on what were plantation railroads.
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Great report Papa Bear. The IBC should be paying you for this report.
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As for the white powder I’ve been thinking of using red, yellow or blue powder for chalk lines as well as the white baby powder. It might come in handy on marks like TU0641
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Actually, it's sort of a journalistic secret handshake. Reporters make mistakes to distinguish ourselves from everyone else. For example, in a story I recently did on Parkinson's Disease I mentioned Mohammed Ali's Nobel Prize in Boxing, an error that no one seemed to notice. (Of course, it was actually the Pritzker.) And I once was forced to buy a round of drinks at a popular press hangout in Belgrade when my colleagues discovered I had failed to make a single mistake in a story I filed. My bad.Every time I've read a story in the paper about an event I had personal knowledge of, it seems there's been at least one error in fact.
Same here. I refer to it as the obligatory error.
Imperfectly,
-ArtMan-
I’ve heard of map makers doing that. I did not know journalist did that too.
One of those errors had me in hot water for a while. I was a member of a community planning group as a representative of a non profit. The newspaper falsely reported that the non profit was going to build a large building in the town.
I was in deep trouble for committing the group to such a big expense. The were mollified only after I handed over the minutes of all the meetings to prove there was no plan to build that building.
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Every time I've read a story in the paper about an event I had personal knowledge of, it seems there's been at least one error in fact.
Same here. I refer to it as the obligatory error.
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I really can not believe the poor quality of news reports in this day and age. A month or so ago the local news anchor was reporting on the recent eclipse of the sun and said the eclipse was caused by the shadow of the moon crossing the sun.
The other anchor then said “This is the last eclipse of the twentieth century”.
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There must be a way to adapt one of those relatively inexpensive laser levelers that are sold in hardware stores for quick alinement of picture frames and the like for under $100. I see a few in the $20 range and several in the $30-$35 range. These things are not always super precise and the visible range and pattern of the laser might be considerations.
Set it up on some kind of stake, level it. Read the line on a vertical rule on each end and subtract the foreward point from the back point readings to get the change in elevation.
- jlw
A few years ago I got a Bushnell level for Christmas. This device comes with two lenses that create a line or cross in addition to a straight beam. I set it up in my yard and checked it with a water level. My water level consisted of a 50 foot garden hose with clear sections on the ends. With the sprit level in the top set to as level as I could; I set the near end of the water level as close to the height of the laser beam as I could by eye. The beam was pointed at the far end of water level about 40 feet away. I found there was about two inches of vertical play in the alignment of the beam with no noticeable change in the sprit level. In other words the spirit level was not really sensitive enough. It needs a flatter curve in the glass.
Before the Bushnell I was playing with a really cheap level I bought at Radio Shack for less than $10. It was a standard level with a laser pointer in one end. I figured what do I have to lose fro $10? I put the batteries in it, turned the laser on and ponted it at the wall about 60 feet way. I then sighted down the long edge of the level and the laser spot was about two and a half feet off. Way too far off. So I fiddled with the laser and got it aligned somewhat better. The good laser levels are set up so the laser is a convenient distance above the surface it is sitting on, such as 1 inch. This one was set at some very strange distance. It did not come out to any kind of even distance in inches or metric.
I’ve considered making my own laser level. I would use one made out of wood. I would take off the metal end caps and run it through a table saw to cut a groove a half laser beam width deeper than one inch. I would then drill a hole in one end cap one inch from the bottom and the diameter of the laser beam. On the opposite end I would hollow it out to take the guts of a laser pointer. The laser diode would be set in the level to shine along the grove and out the hole in the opposite end cap. With that arrangement the laser beam has to be parallel to the base and side of the level body. Now the question is how sensitive is the spirit level? It must be very sensitive to be used over long distances with any accuracy.
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I’m with you Foxtrot Xray.
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How did that affect traction?
A number of years ago the railroad I work with went out on a section of track that had not been run on for a long time. The grass had grown up over the rails. On the way back (up grade) we lost traction on the crushed grass. Wouldn’t you know it but the sanders were out of sand. I became the sander, scooping up dirt on the side of the track and sprinkling it on the rails in front of the loco. Fun fun fun.
The state now allows us to get the good weed killer so we can keep the tracks clear.
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Thanks for the reminder of why I don’t go to that part of the forums.
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Andyphoto,
A great report and it looks like you had a good time too.
I have a tip for editing, I do all my writing and editing in MSword, then copy and paste into the reply window. That way I don’t lose a lot of work when the window times out.
That won’t help the 4000 word limit though.
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Reading some of the page linked to from foxtrot xray’s link I think of President Kennedy’s speech “Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You …..” These people are living that.
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Yeah, I’m kind of fascinated by this one too. I think this will require investigation by DaveD.
The latitude on J 52 (N 36° 56.683) is the same as the latitude for K 52 and the description seems to put it way out of line with the other marks in the same run. So it looks like the description has been mixed up with another mark.
I think the way to find this one is to have a look at the original notes. Or else find a topo map that shows it.
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Maybe I’m just wasting bandwidth here but here is my take. As you know J 52 is part of a line. So I plotted G 52; H 52; J 52; K 52; L 52; and M 52 on Google Earth using the Coordinates in Geocaching. J 52 is conspicuously out of place.
If it was me I would be looking along US 89 between H 52 and K 52. The other marks are from 1.5 to 3 miles apart. But H 52 and K 52 are 6 miles apart. Is it possible there was an I 52? I did not think they used “I” as it was too easy to confuse with “1”. However there is enough room for two more marks there.
In this area US 89 goes northwest southeast.
HTH
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It would be my guess they would set a new reference mark (RM3) instead of resetting RM1. RM3 would be in a totally different position to avoid confusion.
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Wow is right. Excellent report, really great field work Papa Bear.
68-ELDO
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Ah – I had not thought of a direct reading on the mark. I did think of using a device similar to a knife blade but I figured that function would be built into the rod.
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I certainly am not an expert on this, but I imagine the surveyors rod has a metal projection at the bottom that fits into the line that goes through the center of the benchmark.
I believe the line in the center is the point measured to in the survey.
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Is it my imagination or is that concrete pillar just wired to the railing? How stable would that be?
Need Help Converting Army WW2 Coords to Lat/Long
in Benchmarking
Posted
If you are only looking for the coordinates you might try this URL
At the bottom of the post is a URL to download a KML file that has the location of forts and batteries for the harbor defenses of Boston. This is a post by Zardoz50. He has posted similar files for forts and batteries all over the world.
You can then view the file in Google Earth. In Google Earth just click on file>open then select the file.