68-eldo

Now that I think about it the whistle post for grade crossings that I’ve seen were marked with WX. This one is marked with only the W. Could it be for a different signal? According to Wikipedia, the X is for multiple grade crossings. You learn something every day. Thanks

Now that I think about it the whistle post for grade crossings that I’ve seen were marked with WX. This one is marked with only the W. Could it be for a different signal?

I have to disagree. That looks like a whistle sign. They were placed near a grade crossing to tell the engineer to blow the crossing signal with the whistle.

My guess is they were placed by the Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1943, then they were surveyed to NGS standards and added to the data base in 1966. Others with more experience will add their comments, I am sure.

Maybe the survey crew uses a go-fer to find the marks so that the highly paid professionals are not wasting time tramping around in the weeds. The go-fer found and dutifully marked it. Just a guess.

I can’t answer your question, but I can offer this tidbit of information. When we did battery alignment on the ships to align the guns, directors, and other parts of the weapons system we do it by sighting on a star to eliminate parallax. Obviously this has to be done during darkness. But it is always done during the early morning hours because we had to wait until the temperature of the ship evened out. The sun shining on one side of the ship warps the ship enough to make the readings of little value if done too soon after sunset. Not to mention the readings would change as the ship cooled off. With that in mind one would have to wonder about stations like this one. As the sun shines on one side of the building I would think the mark would move because of expansion of the sunny side of the building. So how can this be a first order mark? And of course the height of this mark must change too, but it is scaled so its height is not accurate. <babble=off>

Unfortunately the major impetus to convert the files is that they take up too much room. Can you imagine how many file cabinets are needed to hold all the data sheets? The earliest technology to reduce this kind of paperwork was microfilm. While that medium was good it was rendered nearly useless in some cases by giving the work to the lowest employee on the totem pole. That employee was then rated by quantity not quality. So a simple thing like checking the focus of the camera was neglected. Then the bureaucrat asks why do we need the paper when we have it on microfilm? So the paper was thrown away and the file room was converted into the office of the Vice President for Contemplating Navels. I have found most microfilm to be nearly useless. An example: A number of years ago my aunt showed me a genealogy chart created by a Mr. Von Beck Canfield in 1912. The chart took that branch of our family tree back to 1200s in some cases. She allowed me to take it to work to copy off on the copy machine. It did not work that well and not all parts of the chart are readable as my aunt’s copy was barely readable. The original chart was kept in the New York Public Library. So I sent a request to them and they sent me a microfilm reproduction of the chart. It is not as readable as the copies I made. Unless I can follow in Von Beck’s footsteps and see the original documents he saw (not the microfilms) that part of my family tree maybe lost. Sorry for the rant.

WOW, that’s a nice display. A lot of interesting things in there. Is that an HP 85 calculator? Does it still work?

In my area NGS seems to be correcting the lat/lon of the scaled marks. But they don't seem to be using the logs. One of my first recoveries is TU0450. If you look at the GC.com data page which is frozen in time, the coordinates are N 21° 20.833 W 157° 57.700. The latest NGS datasheet the coordinates are N 21 20.850, W 157 57.700. It has moved north about 103 feet but still about 690 feet south of the actual location. Hand held coordinates are N 21° 20.959 W 157° 57.679 which when plotted on Google Earth is about 50 feet west of the actual location. Considering the mark is on the north face of the building those coordinates are probably the best you can get with the wall of the building blocking the signal. TU0626 has also moved about 103 feet north and TU0637 has moved about 99 feet. So there is some corrections being made, but I don’t know how or why. While the corrections are an improvement they are still a long way off, and not always in the same direction. Still need to use the directions to find these marks.

Just a guess but I would think anything like that would go to government surplus for sale. The non profit I volunteer for has access to state surplus and we picked up a large box of scissors for a few bucks that was confiscated at the airport.

These are "in my county" but I don't think I will be getting them any time soon. DE5195 NECKER AZ MK DE5202 PEARL ASTRO 1959 DE5228 GARDNER DE5231 LAYS DE5246 UHPGF POLE TERN 1 DE5247 KURE 2001 DE5248 LISIANSKI 2001 DE5249 NIHOA 2001 Also not in the GC database. But the NGS data sheets have links to photos. Try plotting these in Google Earth or Google Maps.

I also did the NGS download - BMGPX - Google Earth thing and it makes a big difference when looking for benchmarks. But I did not like the choice of icons Google Earth had so I went to custom icon and changed it to this URL http://www.geocaching.com/mark/images/WptTypes/27.gif. That gives you this for an icon.

You don't need the degree mark. Say you want to go to N 44° 58.035 W 103° 46.293. You can type in N 44 58.035, W 103 46.293 or N 44 58 02.10, W 103 46 17.58 or 44.967250,-103.771550. All of those will take you to the same location on Google Maps. Just be sure to use north and west indicators.

Added note, for Utah you can go to this web site for more information. If you click on the link near the bottom of the page you can search for Plats. When I did that I found the 1856 field notes for T9S R2W. Pretty cool.

As Z15 said this is a corner marker between sections of land. It’s in Township 9 south (T9S) and on the line between Range 2 west (R2W) and 1 west (R1W). It marks the corner of sections 13 and 24 of Range 2W and 18 and 19 of Range 1 W. I went to this web site and found the coordinates for the center of section 24 to be 40.021833,-112.013500 Plug that into Google Maps and see if that does not come close to where you found the marker.

Ikane Thanks for posting that link. And thanks to your company for putting the information on the web site. That will be very helpful to a lot of people in that area. It was also helpful to me even though I am many miles away. I down loaded the NY file and saw there were many stations near or on old Coast Artillery Batteries (another interest of mine) and with the descriptions of the stations I was able to confirm some of the locations of the batteries that I found and marked with Google Earth. It was also fun looking at some of the recoveries. I noticed along Shore Drive Papa-Bear-NY (GEOCACHING (RG)) made a number of recoveries but also skipped a few. I wonder if he saw the marks on Google Earth if he might have found them. I down loaded the county listing for my county and put that on Google Earth. It makes a big difference when looking for benchmarks.

That kind of reminds me of a local hiker/chacher. He likes to post reports of his hikes too. His web pages are not as nice as yours but he adds a topo map with a GPS track on it. Here's a link to one of his pages. He does not have an index page. Don't miss the "next" link at the bottom of his page. It is somtimes hard to see. That doesn't help you much with your benchmark page. Very nice web page Papa Bear.

Radar is also very dependent on the speed of light. The time it takes for the transmitted pulse to get to the target and the echo to return divided in half is then multiplied by the speed of light to determine the distance to the target. Conversely if the distance to the target is known precisely, then the speed of light can be determined from the time it takes for the echo to return to the antenna.

Ah Wikipedia is great. It says the first experiments were done in 1667 using lanterns about a mile apart. It does not go into detail as to how the experiments were done, but I would imagine the reaction time of the people operating the lights would render the results useless. But then this experiment may have been more about finding out if the speed of light is finite or infinite then finding the actual speed. The first quantitative measurement was done in 1676 by Ole Rømer observing the appearance or disappearance of the moon Io as it orbited Jupiter. The appearance/disappearance would happen later than predicted as the Earth moved away from Jupiter and sooner as the Earth moved closer. With modern radar and lasers such measurements are much easier. Sorry about the topic migration.

I would really like to meet the guy who had his thumb on the stop watch button. Seriously how did they measure the speed of light? It’s something I’ve pondered for a long time. It’s not like they could set up with a light on one mountain top and an observer on another one with radios to communicate.

Great pictures. The line extensions (Great circle around the word, and Rhumb line spirals in to the pole) make it even clearer.

Yeah, I thought about responding to the O.P. too, but it reminded me too much of a guy in the shop that would make statements to individuals just to "wind them up". It was a sport with him. After a while you just learned to ignore him and he went on his way to find another victim. He was about as sad a character as the "if it doesn't count I won't do it" bunch. I agree, don't feed the troll.

The extreme North and extreme West benchmark for my county is DE5247 located at 28°23'37.52"N 178°17'38.14"W. It's not on the GC.com database. It doesn't even show up on the Google maps. Google Earth shows the location. That’s going to take more than a small boat to find. That’s 1558 miles from my house. It might be awhile before I go after that one.

Yeah! Tom! Wore the white hat and blue chambray shirt. Pants with the button fly and square patch pockets. He was one of the good guys. We knew that because only the good guys wear white hats. Glen FTG2 1964 - 1968 USS Newport News CA148 USS Perry DD844 USS Harwood DD861

The last sentence in the description for NA1886 says the mark is above the level of the highway. It’s hard to tell from the overall view if the hole in question is above or not, but normally that part of the bridge is not. If it is lower than the highway then it might be a good idea to make another search for the mark.