Thot

Thanks very much for your reply.

I did my first Wherigo yesterday. Today I used RangerFox's cartridge builder http://Wherigo.rangerfox.com to create a cartridge. I did a very a simple one and it was easy to do. But, knowing nothing about this I have questions. Can a Wherigo start at the same location as an existing cache? If a Wherigo doesn't have a cache associated with it can it be listed on the GC website? If it must have an associated cache to have it listed, does it have to be the final or can it be at an earlier stage than the final? I can't figure out how to dry-run it. When I try the rangerfox website's emulator it goes to zone 1 but I can't figure out how to get the actions to appear or how to move past zone 1. Forgive me for these nubey questions but everybody has to start somewhere.

It's probably worth mentioning that land subsidence in our area makes vertical adjusted marks incorrect. I think before GPSs a few were used to measure the amount of subsidence by bringing measurements from 400-500 miles north. But, the height of vertical marks it pretty meaningless here.

I submit recovery reports with coordinates and photos to the NGS using their DSWorld software.

Thanks. While hunting I see people with transits on tripods over marks with helpers with grade rods. I really don't know what they're doing but it's fairly common to either encounter them at the mark or see the evidence they've been there recently. If the marks with adjusted horizontal coordinates aren't used to survey/locate property boundaries, what are they used for?

I've been benchmark hunting for a while now but there's something I've never understood. By far and away the majority of marks in my area are scaled. The coordinates/location given by NGS are normally not very close. The worst I've found was about 1500 feet off and 50-200 feet is common. So, they obviously can't be being used to survey property lines/boundaries. How are scaled benchmarks used by surveyors?

I gave him the information I had and the what I got here (except the post about the CORS stations because I didn't get an email notice of that post). I got him a list of all adjusted benchmarks in this(Harris) county. I haven't heard from him since. So, I don't know what happened with his project.

That seems to mean they're still reporting on benchmarks. Which is it? They still do it or they don't.

You say WERE. Have they quit doing this? Yes. Thanks

You say WERE. Have they quit doing this?

I have a couple of things about the US POWER SQUADRON Did they stop looking for benchmarks in 2005? In our area they had been pretty regular until that year and none since then? I'm curious about some of their finds. Given it's been nine years since these finds and things change, but I'm aware of changes made before 2005 that would have destroyed marks or made them inaccessible, yet they find them. There are several examples but a couple of situations that come to mind are highways that were widened. The description would put the marks along these roads under the extended pavement yet they're reported found. Is this some kind of error or what does mean? In one case a mark was reported in good condition and they stated it was a foot deep under a restaurant's shell covered parking lot. If they had dug around to find it the owner would've been very unhappy -- I certainly wasn't going to, especially since its location was scaled.

There are three benchmark challenge caches in Galveston http://coord.info/GC3C529 http://coord.info/GC3C28X http://coord.info/GC3C91Z They're pretty easy except the types challenge for me. I quit doing intersection stations some time ago and that's where the variety of types are.

I believe he's only interested in lat-lon That's the kind of lat-lon accuracy he's looking for. How would I find this mark in Texas? <musing>I can't see how the scribe mark on the disk can be located with millimeter accuracy.</musing>

Are you saying Triangulation Stations have this kind of accuracy, but ordinary adjusted benchmarks don't?

A graduate student contacted me to help him locate a couple of benchmarks he can use for a study he is doing. He needs locations that are accurate to less than a centimeter and more accurate if possible. I've read that adjusted marks are accurate to less then one centimeter. Are all adjusted marks this accurate? Many in our area were done sixty to 75 years ago. I don't understand how they could have gotten this accuracy back then and surely some errors were made.

That was it. Thank you.

If you look below my avatar you will see that it says Garmin 60CSx. Well that hasn't been true for a long time. I've changed it in my profile, but apparently that's not where it comes from. Where and how do I change it?

Teams called "US POWER SQUADRON" (called USPSQD in the summary), not individual surveyors, have been recovering the marks in our area for quite a while. They did this regularly in 2005 and earlier. They found most of the marks surrounding this one in 2003, 2004 and/or 2005. For some reason they stopped doing it in 2005. Here's an example.

The link provided is to the current datasheet I'm one of the geocachers who submit recovery reports and pictures to the NGS which become part of the datasheets.

Thanks for your reply. Benchmarks near it have been found several times by official teams, and they report failures to find as well as finds. One would think they would have tried for this never recovered one.

Occasionally I run across benchmarks like this one which was placed in the 1960's and has never had a recovery report of any kind. No "Destroyed," no "Not Found," nothing.

So do I. I also have some utilities that I wrote to assist with this. The overview is here

A test. It says my username or password are incorrect and won't let me log in but indications are I'm already logged in.

Posted in 2003 If it's been in the works for 11 years and still isn't done, it seems unlikely it ever will be. However if you go to my discussion of benchmark hunting here the paragraph titled How I Hunt Benchmarks explains how you can download benchmarks from the NGS database and put them into GSAK. Then, if you want the GSAK entries to contain the GC.com logs plus links to the GC.com benchmark database you can run the GSAK gpx file through my Get GC Benchmark Logs utility. It adds the GC logs and links and some other information. After this the entries are much like Pocket Query data from GC except it's current instead of the 14 year old data on GC. This link takes you to a list of my benchmarking utilities.

All I know is I was told it was the only way when I tried to make a submission the old way. You're right about both of those. I'll try to find a place to add those cautions.