mapjunkie

Don't forget that inviting 'Minimum Maintenance' road - actual dirt (or dust), rutted, washed out, narrow, with mud pits and fallen trees, and maybe a stack of round bales where the farmer decided to store them for the winter, that might just stop without warning at the bottom of a muddy hill.

I have some out-of-state training in early May, but if the dates are right, I'm in.

You should add your story to this thread - to have a first find also be an encounter with LEO's might be some kind of record. Welcome! -mapjunkie

Unfortunately, I was NOT along for this one. It would have been a cool recovery to work, though... From the Dec/Jan issue of the Nebraska Dept of Roads employee newsletter - "+ Marks the Spot" (PDF). -Matt (mapjunkie)

Now on www.woot.com - new Magellan eXplorist 300s for $99.99. They'll be there until midnight Central time or until they run out...

I've noticed quite a slowdown loading maps through USAPhotomaps over the last couple days, anyone else? This afternoon getting new photos failed completely. It's still slow tonight, although I am getting them eventually. My suspicious side thinks MS is throttling traffic to benefit Windows Live Local. -Matt

HS5029 - Cool recovery - just goes to show, it's all in who you know. edit - made the PID a link -Matt

R_C, I don't know what has been said here before about the process of leveling, but the way you phrase this ('place a level on the disk to use it') makes me think you are picturing the instrument itself, rather than a leveling rod, over the disk. Actually, the instrument is set up some distance away and a leveling rod is placed on the mark. The instrument operator reads the rod through the level and that reading is added to the elevation of the mark. You now have the elevation of the crosshair in the level, and you can turn and sight another rod placed on another point. Subtracting the new reading from the crosshair elevation gives the elevation of whatever is at the base of the rod - generally a hard point of some kind so that it doesn't change elevation while you stand there. This continues until you either come back to the starting mark, or to another known elevation where you attempt to tie in - that is, the known elevation and your calculated elevation match. Please forgive me if I've been blathering on about the bleedingly obvious. -Matt

Right now on Woot - Lowrance iFinder GPS/MP3 player. Interesting combo. -Matt

Well, I didn't have much of a January, though I did manage to have an intersection station destroyed. (It's been "recovered" twice by that other organization since it was torn down 30+ years ago.) On to February! -Matt

Z15, Is that all that's necessary to read stadia? When I was surveying, I never had occasion to learn, but I always figured that there was some esoteric calculation involved. Who knew? -Matt

I happened upon this while looking for GCJ8DW, about the end of Febuary 2005. I sent the photo to the state Game & Parks commision, the guy there is pretty sure it's a dog, because you can see the toenails in the print. He said a cat would more likely have the claws sheathed. It's across the street from a fairly new subdivision, maybe 30 meters away. There have been recent reports of a big cat in the area, which is just outside of Wilderness Park in SW Lincoln, NE. Now I'm not saying this is a cat, but they are coming back in the region. -Matt

Klemmer, The site is legit - regstered to: The US is unique in that we don't generally use the country top level domain name in our domain names. -Matt

Seeing as this: is the reason Max gave for the suspension, I went and looked for such a personal attack or flame. Didn't find one that I could tell. I will grant that Rob comes across a little abrasive, that seems to be just his typing style. Take that into consideration along with Max jumping in where I don't see any need for moderation (what was the 'play nice' for?) and you seem to have ended up with an unfair action by a moderator. It's easy enough to undo. -Matt

Okay, I may be completely wrong here, but the descrip for KV5335 says "THE OUTER END OF THE W BREAKWATER" and the descrip for KV5336 says "THE OUTER END OF THE E BREAKWATER" - one is west and one is east. Both Google Earth and USAPhotomaps appear to show structures on both sides of the entrance to Cheesequake Cr. - USAPhotomaps pic is a bit more obvious. The descriptions of the light and iron target are so different that they surely (HAH!) are different physical objects. I suppose that's enough long-distance speculation - do you think this is likely? -Matt

Oh goody, another toy to play with... GEO, it looks like I'll be down in your neck of the woods this weekend - family in Republic and Shell Knob. Are there any marks left to locate around there? -Matt

I can't speak to the issue of duplicate PIDs, but the stationing likely refers to 16560 units (could be feet, meters, parsecs, whatever) from a defined beginning point. When I was working for BoR, we used the same pattern. Generally the beginning point was defined as 100+00, so that we could back-station if corrections were needed. You could avoid going into negative numbers that way. Right or left is referenced to the direction of increasing stationing. Face 'downstream' or towards increasing numbers, and right or left is to your right or left. It only makes sense for linear work - roads, canals and so on. -Matt

Hmmm - a mason's chisel could be evidence that the disk was removed. The NGS sheet says survey disk in concrete monument; was there any sign of concrete in the bottom of the hole? -Matt

Makes perfect sense - Thanks Z15 -Matt

I have noticed in the description of a couple vertical control marks that the disk is set in the"water table" of a building. Now I know where I would expect to find the disk, but I'm curious about the terminology - is this an archaic term or does it describe a particular feature of a construction technique? I've only seen it on marks set on government buildings (so far). (see LF0490 , which I intend to collect this weekend) -Matt

NO0268, reported on the datasheet as 12203 FT. The highest point in the state, reported by Netstate, is 5474 FT. The metric height is consistent with the elevation in feet 3 miles away at the Hyannis airport. I'll take this one to NGS. - Matt

I use MS Streets & Trips for this - I'm sure other similar mapping programs have the ability to plot entered coords. I'm also sure everyone else will have their own favorite method. It takes a bit of massaging to get the numbers in the correct format (decimal minutes in GC v. decimal degrees in S&T), but there are tools out there such as GeoCalc, jeeep.com that make this fairly painless. - (yet another) Matt

BDT and Z15, Thanks for the input. I didn't consider rephrasing any of the other call-outs, it was just the "SOUTHWEST END OF THE SOUTHWEST WINGWALL" part that really bothered me. I've never seen left or right bridge ends (relative to flow) noted in any recoveries - that would seem to be easier to deal with. It's something we always used when I was surveying for my state's Natural Resource Comission. Must have been a local convention. Thanks again - it's good to know I didn't confuse myself. -Matt

I've had a complicated recovery for LG1362. I don't think the original description indicated the corect wingwall, so I submitted this one: I've now started to second-guess myself, and I'm inviting criticism of my description. I've posted a diagram of the bridge. The hiker trail is new, as is the ballpark. A section of Charleston Street to the north of the ballpark has been closed. Does this note convey what's on the ground, or should I send a correction? -Matt

The First Guide Meridian East stone on the Nebraska-Kansas border will be remonumented later this month. Anyone here involved? Could be interesting in a very map-geekish sort of way. The article says there will be a chaining contest. -Matt