mloser

My quick take: I have a 60CS and love it. No post purchase dissonance at all, which is rare for me. I had tried a Magellan (pre-Explorist) and didn't like the size, screen or controls, so that left me with Garmin. I had almost settled on a 76 of some sort so I went and looked at them at a local store. The stats on the 76 have it being a bit larger than the 60, but it FEELS much larger--it was out of consideration instantly. I don't care if it floats, as I am not a boater, so that isn't an issue. My advice--make sure you try each one you are considering before you make a choice. As you can see from this thread, there are different opinions on each unit, and that is just what they are--opinions. With the exception of known bugs that some units have, the usability questions can be answered only by the prospective purchaser and the only way to really determine them is to try each unit you are considering.

First of all, autoroute isn't always the smartest way to get somewhere. It uses algorithms that presuppose speeds on certain road types, and also is not as aware of road types as you are. Once I asked for the quickest route somwhere and it sent me on a 3 mile dirt road. That road certainly was the SHORTEST route, but my speed of 15 was probably NOT what autoroute thought it would be. (It was also blissfully unaware of the "Deliverance" nature of the populace along the road, but I was not surprised about that). It is vital that all the CitySelect maps for your route be loaded. For instance, if you miss one in the middle and the fastest route is not part of the basemap, it will create a route that uses the basemap route in the missing map section, and therefore quite possibly in the sections you loaded. That means that if the shortest route is to go by local Route "xx", which does not exist on the basemap, if you don't have the CitySelect map loaded it will create a route using whatever it can find on the basemap, even if your short route exists on MOST of the maps you loaded. Could that be the issue?

Actually, that is stated on the NGS recovery page. It says if you want to mark a station as destroyed to email the evidence to Deb Brown. She is the arbiter of all destroyed marks.

I just got a real cheapie Saturday-- a National Geographic metal detector from Ebay. It is a kid's detector and obviously is less sensitive than the hobbyist ones. However, it is so small I can easily put it in my backpack, which is key for me, because I don't want to trapse around holding a huge detector. I got it for $25 plus shipping. If it is successful I will let you all know.

The difference has to do with what order the stations are. Sometimes the reference marks were surveyed to a higher order and were acceptable to the NGS as separate stations. If they were surveyed to a lower order they just appear on the box score of the triangulation station's datasheet.

That depends on who removes the bridge and if they notice that the mark is there and choose to report its demise. I have a similar situation nearby and am trying to work with state DOT officials to make sure the removed marks get sent in as destroyed so they do not clutter the NGS database with "not found" entries when they do not exist. The only real time to catch this sort of thing is during the demolition of the station. I would suggest you contact the bridge builders and see what their plans are. Maybe they would let you knock the mark off and you could submit it to NGS (by SUBMIT, I mean submit pictures of the destroyed mark. The NGS is not interested in receiving the disks back). The numbers are the elevation, in meters. The datasheet has: NAVD 88 - 243.820 (meters) 799.93 (feet) ADJUSTED The new bridge may have a mark set in it, although that is rare now. The original mark will be either accidentally put in a dump truck by an unsuspecting demolition worker who did not know it existed, or discarded or kept by a bridge engineer or construction worker as a souvenir.

That hill looks like a porcupine! Good luck telling which are the two towers in question. At least you know RM4 is in the base of one of them. Take a look at some of the discussions here about intersection stations. There may still be towers at the locations described in the datasheets, but they may not be the SAME towers. There is an FCC site to check tower build dates that has been mentioned here also and may help you determine if the tower is the one described or not. SIER RESET seems to have been set exactly where SIER was, or at least close enough for our purposes. The recovery states that the underground mark was recovered and used to reset it. So your angle for the azimuth should be the same on both sheets. The error you mention would not be due to 1933 lack of accuracy, as they were just as accurate then as they are now, but more likely just a description. I wouldn't consider it to be an issue. I thought you were in trees at this location but see you are just in scrub. Can you shoot the angle that the box score has? Either to the station from your suspected RM3 location or the other way around? Yes, the bearing is to true north, so don't forget to correct for the magnetic declination. Pull up the Topozone map from the benchmarking page and at the bottom you will see the declination. It is about 13 degrees east in this area if I remember right. Also, I forgot to mention, the original SIER description mentions a cairn near RM3. It may be there or there may be remnants of it, which would help you a lot in determining if you are near RM3. This is the sort of hunt a lot of us really enjoy--research and then some field work. It makes the find much sweeter. Even a definitive Not Found is ok if you know you have done your homework. Good luck! Matt

Was the mark you observed in a boulder? If so, it might be a replacement for RM3. If not, I suspect RM3, or some remnants of it, still exist on that hill. As for the towers, were there any there? You found RM4 in the base of a tower support. Did you look up? Finally, according to the Manual of Geodetic Triangulation, published by the US Coast and Geodetic Survey, eccentric stations are to be set up "in cases where it will not be practicable to occupy the true station in the future". This eccentric was most likely set when, or sometime after, the original 1928 station was set, but before the reset. This may explain why the reset was done, as well as why the eccentric was not identified in the reset description--it was no longer needed. To get some more information, and interestingly enough, to see that there is a RM5, take a look at: SIER, the original station description, which was retired when it was marked destroyed in 1973 and SIER RESET was described. It does not mention the eccentric, which I find odd, but does mention RM4 and RM5 being iron pipes: DX2175'R.M. 4 AND R.M. 5 ARE BOTH NEW REFERENCE MARKS. THEY ARE DX2175'BOTH FD. 2 IN IRON PIPE WITH NAIL SET IN CONCRETE 0.4 FT. DX2175'ABOVE GROUND SET IN CONCRETE BLOCK. NO REFERENCE FOR EITHER DX2175'PIPE. RM3 is described two different times in this sheet: 1933 DX2175'NO. 3 IS ALMOST IN LINE WITH TELEPHONE POST, 40 FEET DX2175'NORTH OF ROAD, AND APPROXIMATELY THREE-EIGHTHS MILE DX2175'FROM STATION S 57 DEG 47 MIN E. and 1958 DX2175'THE AZIMUTH MARK IS A STANDARD REFERENCE MARK DISK STAMPED DX2175'SIER NO 3 1928 1933, CEMENTED IN A DRILL HOLE IN A 10-INCH DX2175'BOULDER THAT PROJECTS 4 INCHES ABOVE GROUND. IT IS 55 FEET DX2175'NORTHEAST OF THE CENTER LINE OF A TRACK ROAD AND 3 FEET SOUTH DX2175'OF A CAIRN. In short, you could spend quite some time at this location finding the history of the stations here. Even looking for all the evidence of SIER could take an afternoon! I hope you get a chance to go back.

BuckBrooke, That broken arrow is pointing to a valley. Going to the Topozone link from the page and selecting a larger scale (1:48,000 or 1:50,000) will help you see this. I think the AZ (RM3) is where Klemmerer thinks it is, but like most azimuth marks the description is just vague enough to make the hunt a bit of a crap shoot. From what I have seen related to triangulation stations, I would expect the mark to be on the highest point of that small ridge. Is the "new" mark in a boulder? If so, it would be hard to place it exactly where the old RM3 was because if RM3 was knocked out the stem would have remained. Also, the azimuth indicates 123 degrees as opposed to 122. Another thing to look for if you go back is the eccentric mark, shown in the box score as DX4271 SIER ECC 16.941 METERS 30513. The eccentric has a PID but no datasheet, either on Geocaching or the NGS, but it still may exist. I will let the experts explain what an eccentric is but my understanding is that they are often set when the station is hard to occupy or the line of sight to another station is blocked. Then an eccentric is set for easier use. RM4 is in the base of DX4269 (or DX4245, it is hard to tell), which is another station with a PID and no datasheet, but if you found it you should have found the mast or remains of it. That means you can either claim that station or submit it as destroyed. The same goes for the other tower. Is it there? Are there remains? I hope you get a chance to go back and finish your hunt. If you can, get some area pics of the marks so we can see the big picture!

Boomer-Scavengers found the right one at N 35° 10.024 W 093° 38.685. Their's is the first recovery. The coords for the other mark were posted as N 35° 10.025 W 093° 38.682. Mag They didn't find the reference marks.

Since we are bragging, I want to bring up my "13 find day". I didn't head out with a personal record in mind, but that is the way it happened. In addition, it was probably the best benchmarking day I ever had--read the forum post. I also found 4 yesterday after heading out without any description sheets. Needless to say they were ones that had been located before and were easy to spot since they were all scaled, so I had no real idea where to look once my GPSr took me to the spot. I gotta get wireless so I have the datasheets with me at all times! I am trying to create a link to the NGS datasheet pages for my web enabled cell phone, but Verizon has such a horrid web interface that I can't get it working yet.

I think we have all been there at one time or another. Every serious benchmarker here has a story about USPSQD recoveries. Now I just take the Power Squadron Not Found recoveries as a simple challenge to find the mark and recover it. There are a couple of Power Squadron people in my area who have done a good job however. Still, I think I have recovered a couple they could not find. In general, that sort of sloppy recovery makes me much more careful before I report a Not Found! Matt

In my opinion, you found the 1040 benchmark. Your location is precisely where the topographic map shows a benchmark located. This looks like a USGS mark that is not represented on the NGS site (due to any of a number of reasons). The USGS descriptions are available but I have never tried to get any for my area. I have my hands full with NGS benchmarks. Once the rain stops, head north from that mark to the next intersection, where you will hopefully find DC0362 and DC0363.

Don't forget to take a critical eye with you for the "telephone pole". While I am not an expert on airway beacons they are usually more substantial structures and have a large rotating light on top. MZ1811 seems typical of them. Also, the coordinates will be adjusted, so your GPSr should read very very close to the location of the tower. As for your other mark, the cornstarch may help you read it, but I would be more interested in the location, and determining if that mark is the more southerly of the two on the Topozone map I put a link to above. Black Dog Trackers read the elevation as 1040 and I agree from what I can see. That is a major clue to the mark being one of the two on the Topozone map, but not one that you can log as it is not in the NGS database. The other two marks would be good finds if they still exist, and I am willing to bet if ONE does the OTHER will too, as they are on the same culvert. This is the sort of hunt that makes benchmarking fun! A lot of us are as intrigued by the hunt as we are by the find, and doing the research makes a find more rewarding, or helps confirm a "Not Found" if that is the result.

idiosyncratic, I did some research on your disk and the two benchmarks near it, and think the following might be the case: The Topozone USGS map for those coordinates show the mark to be located south of the described location by about .1 mile. See:Topozone Map. This is based on what I THINK I see on the maps I have looked at, and the description for DC0362, the benchmark you said is nearby. According to the description of DC0362, it is on the same culvert as DC0363, across the street from DC0363. On the Topozone map, about .18 miles south of your two marks, is a benchmark labeled BM 1040. This could easily be the mark you found, as the elevation stamped on it is 1040. This mark is NOT in the NGS database, and since you suspect the boulder may have been moved it will be hard to prove, unless you found that mark at the intersection indicated by Topozone (Mapquest shows the intersection as Proctor Valley Rd and some unnamed road I suspect is also Proctor Valley Rd). Mapquest map. Your best bet is to head back there and look at the culvert at Campo and Proctor Valley and see what you can find. The coordinates for DC0362 are at this intersection, so use it for a start. DC0362 is on the north side of the road and DC0363 is on the south side. If the original culvert remains you should be able to find both marks. Finally, I took a quick look at the benchmark you recovered, DC2085 and think you found something that is NOT the station described. According to the description the station is the airway beacon, and NOT a disk. If you found a disk at that location it isn't in the NGS database. Of course, if you were there you saw that beacon so you can log it. One thing to be certain of is whether this is actually the beacon that is described. Many have been removed over the years. The post by CacherCharge for this mark has pictures but they are so poor I cannot tell WHAT they are of--it looks like a telephone pole to me, but could be anything, including an airway beacon.

Some help with the CAQ (Constantly Asked Question) of "what is not found/found/poor/destroyed" would be of great use. I think the most asked "not found" question is what to do with a benchmark "stem"--is that "found-poor" or "not found"? A quick guideline for what the NGS considers "destroyed" marks would be in order. As has been mentioned here in the forums, proving a negative is harder than proving a positive--just because it isn't there doesn't mean it is destroyed. You don't have to detail what to do in order to report a destoyed mark, just say that the criteria for destroyed marks is pretty stringent and that the forum reader might want to search previous posts for guidance (we have gone over it a number of times here). Clear up the "report no more than every year" question: Q. I heard the NGS said that they don't want benchmarks reported more than once a year. Does that mean I should report them yearly? A. No, you fool! (You may want to take that out) Use your judgement. If the last reported date for a mark is 1979, then yes, report it, even if nothing major has changed in the description. The report at least tells surveyors that urban sprawl has not taken another mark. If it was reported last year but something major has changed, then again report it to help someone else find the mark. Think about how you would feel if you had that data sheet and wanted to find the mark--if it was set in 1942 and there were no recoveries since, would you feel confident of being able to find it easily? On the other hand, if there was a 2005 recovery that only stated that the mark was found as described, you would believe you could locate it with little problem. Q. What sort of description changes should I report? A. Again, think of what YOU would want if you were looking for the mark. Measure from nearby landmarks--telephone poles, curb, road center, large trees, house corners, etc. (When a mark is in front of a house, I typically report the address--is that ok?). How is that? I am sure others will come up with more! Matt

I also don't care about points, and in fact would prefer we stay away from a system like that, as it would make this more of a game or competition. I even think I would get caught up in posting recoveries in order to boost my points (sort of like USPSQD does). I wouldn't say no to some SWAGG (entertainment business term for freebies, an abbreviation for Stuff We Are Gonna Get), but since I am not a hat wearer, or a big fan of t-shirts with other people's names on them, only a pin would get me excited. I go with Black Dog's idea--provide the tallies and let us see 'em. In some ways it is reward enough that we have been recognized as a group.

I looked at my stats in Geocaching and discovered that last October I posted about 65 recoveries to Geocaching. Following my normal practice of reporting all my recoveries to NGS, other than those that have recent recoveries, I estimate that about 50 of last October's 143 GEOCAC recoveries might be mine. I am sure I am not alone in my desire to see a list of GEOCAC initials with their NGS recoveries. Just like Rogbarn, I love statistics, especially if I am making a noticable difference in them! Black Dog posted something similar in a different thread here. Can that be done Casey? Perhaps a monthly list of all GEOCAC recoveries with initials. Be sure to back date it for Rogbarn, who will number crunch it and give us all a graph of our performance(s)!

For the most part you will only hear back if they do not mark it destroyed. If they do, you can check it online after 2 weeks or so. I submitted KW3089 on Feb 9 and noticed today it is in the NGS database as destroyed: NGS KW3089

Most cities put up statues of famous local figures. Either your town didn't have any famous people or their budget was low--this is all they could afford. Just kidding. They are probably for surveying, but I am sure the surveyor crowd will check in soon with more specific information.

No offense Elcamino, but THAT is something I don't plan on carrying in my Ford! I have enough junk floating around in it. I forgot to mention that I have USGS 1:24000 scale maps for about 25 miles around my area, each marked with benchmark names. I find the topo maps very useful in determining exact location of the marks.

Take a look at the posts that Black Dog listed. There are a lot of good suggestions there. My tape LOOKS like Elcamino's but is a 100' cheapie from Lowe's. It doesn't measure in tenths of an inch or meters but it gets the job done if I have done my meter-feet conversion right. I don't need 10ths of an inch to find a foot square block of concrete... usually. 100' is a bit too short for some triangulation station measurements and I would love to have meters, but I am happy with what I have. I like Elcamino's stakes! But since I didn't have a source for forestry stakes I grabbed some spikes--huge nails--also at Lowe's, and sprayed them orange so I can find them. For a shovel I bought a folding camp shovel--the smallest I could find. I am on my second one and about to get my third because $10 shovels are about as good as one would think a $10 shovel would be, and I tend to use them hard. Still, it folds up and is easy to carry. To keep all my stuff in I swiped my daughter's school backpack. Yeah, I had to buy her a new one, but I would rather SHE have the nice one and I take the worn one. I throw all my stuff in there and walk to where I need to go, hands free if I need to climb an embankment or walk a mile. Finally, based on a suggestion in one of those posted threads, I never go anywhere without my "probe", which is a Walmart camp fork with the fork part snapped off, leaving me with a wooden handle on a metal stick. Again, they don't last forever--one unexpected probe into an underground rock and you will have a bent probe. I unbend em and keep going until they start bending too easily. Then I get a new one for less than $5. It is the only thing I can't get in the backpack but serves as an impromptu bushwacking tool at times (leading to more bends in it). Don't have the truck. Could use one from time to time though. See my post for KW3127 for a time I would have been happy to have 4-wheel drive. Overall I like having my Ford Focus because it is pretty narrow and has allowed me to squeeze off the road onto the shoulder in places where a larger car or truck wouldn't have fit.

Now if we could just post a recovery? Anyone else having problems?

The adjustment mentioned is to NAD83 (North American Datum 1983) datum, which was a change to use a different ellipsoid, GRS80, (essentially, the earth's shape) based on the central reference point being the center of the earth, and not the Clarke base station at Meade's Ranch in Kansas. The shift of datum resulted in a grid shift that varied depending on the location in the US and the shape of the ellipsoid used at that location. For a bit more information on the grid systems can be found at http://www.towermaps.com/nad.htm. There is no magic about this site--it is just the first one I came up with on a Google search.

I hope they didn't find the jug! It is under the monument, approximately three feet underground, by the description.