mrh - terre haute

GEO you certainly find yourself in some interesting situations

So now the question becomes one of when did NAVD 88 supersede NGVD 1929? That would establish when the latest date the marks were set a@@-u-ming that IFC&WRC adopted NAVD 88 at its earliest opportunity.

Well, it looks like these marks may be considerably more recent than 1929 given that the NGVD 1929 wasn't named such until 1973. Who knows when or if the IFC&WRC adopted a more recent datum. I'm keeping my smileys though Thanks - mrh

A quick look at Indiana Division of Water - Indiana Benchmarks on page 4 of the Parke County list reveals: "IDNR TBM 4 In Parke County, at Coxville, on the East end of the South Abutment of the covered bridge,10 feet from the South end and on the inside of the wooden shelter of the bridge, a standard IFC&WRC bronze benchmark tablet, stamped "PAR 4". 516.277 feet NGVD 1929 2nd Order and IDNR TBM 9 A chiseled square in the same location as BM PAR 4 517.679 feet NGVD 1929 2nd Order Looks like BM516 is most likely IDNR TBM 4. It also looks like I have one more file I have to carry around with me when I hunt these things. I'd have to do some checking but these would probably be my oldest finds to date. Attaching 2 non-official smileys:

I have S&T 2005 and haven't had any problems with it. It works very well with my Legend to show realtime location and yes on brand new construction the maps are out of date somewhat. I think it's a great program and worth the price. I like it especially that you can build a route in S&T and export it as a route to use on the gps. mrh

BDT I guess the main reason I prefer the pages from geocaching.com has strictly to do with formatting and how things appear in web browsers or other viewing software. Also, I don't know how it is where you live but the most recent entries on a given mark are usually by geocachers. I realize the database snapshot geocaching is "dated". The other day I was standing over a RESET that was placed by USGS in 1991 that does not appear in the geocaching database. I've used Plucker to load an entire county onto my pda and scrolling through the whole thing to find any particular datapage is a pain. However, I do like it that I can create a gpx from the same NGS webpage. I'll also paste that NGS page into a spreadsheet to use on my laptop. So both sites have their use. While writing this I had hoped to check the NGS site to see if the RESET I mentioned is in their database but I guess the solar storm is interfering with them. I waited out the storm and finally got the page to load. C293 RESET which is the mark I was looking at isn't listed in the NGS database either. mrh

I went the paperless route this weekend for the first time. Plucker was by far more useful than Cachemate. This is due to my being a regular member. Therefore by gpx files were out of EasyGPS so all the logs and hints were excluded. Where Cachemate trumped Plucker was in doing solve-the-puzzle-fill-in-the-blank multicaches. For benchmark hunting the geocaching datasheets will have to do. I do use BMGPX to generate my gpx files from the NGS pages so all is not lost. For me paperless is definitely the way to go. Thanks all for getting this discussion going. mrh

Skillett, I have an issue I can't resolve with Cachemate. I am trying to hotsynch a pdb from GSAK. When I open Cachemate all I get for a benchmark name is the station name i.e. X217 instead of the PID. I have set GSAK to use %code which is the PID in my database. Any ideas? All software is registered b-t-w. mrh

Skillett I think I'm ready to ditch the spreadsheet in favor of the NGS.dat file in html format, which for some reason is the format IE thinks I should should be saving the file in anyway. Thanks! I think this "paperless" is going to work great

Artman I like your workflow. One question I have (not having worked with the GSAK html files) is, when you generate html from the gpx file. Is it one file or one file for each mark? I haven't done much looking into Plucker yet. From what I gather it is an html viewer? Also, I hadn't considered the idea of saving jpg images out of USAPM to use on the PDA, good one. So now what we need is a free jpg viewer. For now I've got to google me some spreadsheet apps. Thanks mrh One other question: if we eliminate all the paper from our benchmark hunting, what do we do when we're out there and nature calls? turn off the cellphone and keep hunting

Play around with the GPS Menu. USPM can use the Garmin protocol so it's just a matter of picking the COM Port, in my case (I have a Legend) One of the other options in USPM is to display your gps tracks, which can be saved as a file. I've not tried that yet so I can't say how that works exactly. So when I start out I open USPM and then open the gpx file with all the marks / caches I am hunting. They are displayed onscreen along with my gps location. Cool stuff

BDT That's pretty slick. I take a laptop with me and tie in my gps with USAPhotomaps to have real time location on the quad I'm working on. Rather than print the spreadsheet I just leave it on the laptop and alt-tab switch to it when I am ready to hunt. I like your method for when I'm not packing the laptop though. I wonder if there is a way to get that spreadsheet onto a pda? mrh

Z15, Those would definitely come in handy. I ran across one this weekend that similar information would help to settle. mrh

maconart what do you use to open the Word file once you have it on the Zire? Is there some kind of spreadsheet that comes bundled with the unit. I have a whole bunch of spreadsheets containing marks for entire counties. I have no idea what I'm getting as far as software goes. I just figured I'd use Cachemate to organize everything. mrh

Just a quick update. I went to palmone.com and got a Zire 21 from the Factory Outlet. Doesn't have a lot of the bells and whistles but I can't see any use for this thing beyond geocaching. It'll cost around $60 with freight and $8 for cachemate fits the budget.

I was doing some geocaching this weekend in the vicinity of Roseville Covered Bridge - Coxville, Indiana. While doing research for my trip I noticed the BM516 at the West end of the bridge. I pull up a map of all Parke County marks with PIDs and this one doesn't appear. I stop by to check it out and this is what I found: I think WOW! I may have found my first chiselled square. No telling how long it has been here since there is no PID to look up at NGS. I decide to walk to East end of the bridge to at the guaging station when I turn the corner onto the bridge and see: within just a few feet of the other mark. So my question, is the first photo a chiselled square of the type a survey crew would have left or is BM516 more likely to be the Indiana Flood Control disk in the second photo?

The way I get the NGS datapages into a spreadsheet (in my case 1-2-3) is to search by either county or quad. Once the data has finsihed loading into IE I use Edit>Select All followed by Edit>Copy. Then on a blank page in 1-2-3 I use Edit>Paste Special. Using Paste Special gives me the option to paste in HTML or Text. I select Text and Paste. I save the workbook with the name of the county or quad. I could just use Save As from IE and save as an html file but I like having the data in a spreadsheet. I can go through the page and name ranges for each PID then I can use Range>Go To to easily get to the datapage for each PID. Once in a while I will download the geocaching page since the finds tend to be more recent and I like the formatting. There's just way too many benchmarks to do that when I can grab a county at a time from NGS. This system works great for me but is just weighs too much to haul around on a bike. Am I wrong here because it seems from what I've read it really doesn't take a huge investment to get this done. I've seen IIIxE's for $50 - $75. Or would that be enough of a machine? After reading this I left out that doing the Save As html file in IE allows me the opportunity to use the saved file with BMGPX to generate a gpx file containing all the marks for the county, if I hadn't done it previously.

Skillett Which pda are you using? I am kicking around getting a IIIXe. I don't know anyone around here who is using a pda. I use a laptop currently with USAPhotomaps and NGS datapages saved into a spreadsheet. Works great when I'm driving but with Summer coming I like to ride my mtb. My laptop is light but not THAT light! ooh ooh new lyrics: I ride my, I ride my mtb

Nice photos Z15!!!!!!!

Nice photo!! I don't know what resolution you shot that BM at but I sure took a lot of heat a while back for putting up photos with that amount of detail.

I am thinking about getting a IIIxe to use in lieu of a laptop. What software do i need to get to use on the Palm? I already have GSAK and USAPhotomaps.

I have S&T 2005 and st2gpx works with it. mrh

I was going to say that your gps would do the conversion from WGS84 to the BNG so it wouldn't matter what how you uploaded the waypoints but after checking my Legend, BNG isn't one that is included. There is a bunch of them in there but that isn't one of them. mrh

Microsoft Streets and Trips and GSAK are a great combination. For a little added fun you build routes in Streets and Trips and with est2gpx you can create a .gpx file that can be uploaded to your gps. mrh