billwallace

So, we go out for a number of weeks and collect benchmarks then at the end of the contest use that collection to make as many words as we can? Or, we find a group of benchmarks to make a word then go find another word ...??

i would like to claim (in advance) the "Forces and Agencies beyond my control have been and are conspiring to keep me from benchmark hunting' bonus

At the bottom of this page is an e-mail link to a person that just may know - the link documents a GPS station that was set up in Iceland in 2006 - bet they would know.

A little side trip on the way home from work never hurt anyone! Granda - 1933

One way would be to use the NGS Benchmark Viewer. Pick your state then navigate to the location (it accepts city names, zip codes, lat/lon coordinates,...). Icons will appear on the map for benchmarks that are in the NGS database - if they show up on the map there is a good chance you can log them at GC.com. There is also a zip code and lat/lon search at gc.com. Make sure you read thru this faq.

I found this at Planet Zhanna (down ant the bottom of the page), and changed it for gc.com. Make a boomark and insert this as the location. It will pop up a box, asking for the pid and then take you there. javascript:void(str=prompt('PID:',''));if(str){location.href='http://www.geocaching.com/mark/details.aspx?PID='+escape(str);}

If the kmz file is accesible via a url then you put the url (including the filename) into the Google Maps search box. I tried doing it with the file on my computer using 'file:\\filepathwhatever\...kmz', but it didn't work - so it has to be accesible via the web. I used the url for your file download. Just tried it the other day because I had a need. -- Google Maps Help: Viewing data from Google Earth

Were you thinking of making something for your own use or to put up on the web to share? One nice feature would be to be able to display a subset based on a user's query, like all the marks that have the word chisel in the data sheet. That's pretty cool, I use awk scripts to extract data sheets then run them through NGSREAD it's really fast. At the bottom of the NGSREAD page is an awk script that converts dat files to kml files (dat2kml) - it might be a useful template, I like the ballons it and NGSREAD make. Monkeykat's Benchmark Viewer (mobile) are great for the web (ala google maps) I tried foxtrot's kmz file in google maps the other day and it looked promising but the map kept refreshing every 15 seconds and whatever Google Maps wrapped it in wouldn't let me change that or turn off the USGS overlay - gonna have to read more about that, (THEY took my GE away at work, no more fantasy benchmark hunting at lunch )

Here is the gc.com benchmark search page - lets yo search by zip code. If you click Advanced search can search by coordinates. Always a favorite, scaredycat's Benchmark Viewer for Michigan - if they are on this map they should be in the GC.com database. Welcome to benchmarking.

Welcome to benchmarking. I'm just down the road in San Luis Obispo county.. There are a few marks up there in your neck of the woods that I've been eye-ing but I haven't made it up there yet.... their orthometric height is within a meter of the geoid height.

I never could figure these two out: FV1985 and AA4350

Clarence King - from the USGS museum

Contact USGS Offices In Your State

Can you say that ??!!

Try here

Not only rerouted but it could be in the same location but the hills and curves may have been flattened and thus the mileage would get shorter or longer. Having worked for the DOT and having access to plans and ROW maps I have seen this many times. For instance; one road in my area is completely different from its 1948 location but in the same general location and the junction used in 1948 was moved 1/2 mile farther along the intersection route. If you did not have old maps or plans you might not be able to tell from out in the field as things changed in 1955. Even the USGS could not locate some marks because instead of 3.5 miles they would now 3.2 miles, instead of 60 ft from C/L as in 1948 it was now 160 ft from the existing C/L. You have to put yourself in past and using Google maps or anything on the computer is often not accurate to the extent you expect it to be. You are better off using paper USGS maps. We use to use Delorme Topo quads loaded into my laptop plugged into a differential Garmin GPS and I often found the plotted location on the computer map to be completely off the location on the ground. The location on the map screen (software) would place the mark on low ground when you new it was 1/8th miles away on the hill where the map screen showed a triangle. Most of the time the computer maps are only accurate to a certain magnification and if you zoom in it goes all out of wack. hmmmm.... thnx now i just need to get a day off

I see you posted to the GeoBeagle forum that might be your best bet. But ... if you could make a gpx file with just one benchmark and post it here as a code snippit someone might spot the issue. If I remember correctly there is something in the gpx file that says a waypoint is a geocache - that might not be set correctly. I know the GSAK Garmin export macro has a checkbox to tell it to export benchmarks as geocaches - that macro makes a gpx file, you might want to try it and see if the file it makes works on your droid. welcome to benchmark hunting!! For immediate gratification, if you are in a service area, try this website Scardy Cat's Mobile Benchmark viewer

Thnx.... more reading

Wow , thats cool. Seems like a lot of work. If you don't mind would you briefly explain how you georeferenced the maps? did you use your own software? I've tried that with snapshots of USGS quads (geo PDFs) and Google Earth and it seemed fairly reasonable - but you can't bend or shape the overlays beyond changing the length or width. Anyway, thnx.

Volume one of the Report has been scanned and is in the Internet Archives. The Appendix on Geodetical and Topographical Methods, while interesting, doesn't contain a list of the coordinates for locations used in the triangulation. Looks like the only thing they left behind were stone cairns on the principal points - there is a table of at least some (all?) of the principals and their lattitudes. The illustrious Coast Survey gets a mention for work of "the utmost precision".

Where did you find the USGS triangulation book?? Just searching around in Google Books. hmmm ... amazing what you can find in there

Where did you find the USGS triangulation book??

Here is a link to ScardyCat's Benchmark Viewer for Tennessee. Select the MyTopo map option, put your coordinates in the Location Search box, click Go! and zoom in. Looks like there is a triangle symbol there with an elevation next to it.

Here is the Digital Map of Mexico On the top left is an icon that looks like a computer network icon, when you hover over it it says "Capas de información". Click that and put a check in the Geodesia box - click the + next to Geodesia and put a check in the Red geodésica nacional box - there is a round symbol with arrows at the top of that box that you might need to click to reload everything. You should see the geodesic mark symbols (squares, diamonds, triangles) on the map - there is a legend of those somewhere - there are quite a few around Cancun, especially along the beach. If you select the i icon at the top and then click the symbol a box will pop up with info about the thing you clicked and if you select Red Geodésica Nacional Pasiva in the drop-down box you can get a link to a data sheet (which sometimes doesn't work but sometimes does which is cool). Did it look like this??

Yeay ... I don't feel skunked ..