Black Dog Trackers

On Aug. 30, I went to Calendine to see the rock and take a couple of pictures and measurements. I confirmed Difficult Run's location of the exposed rock. I also pried up a bit of grass around the rock, but the exposed part is indeed the highest part, and exposing more revealed no square. Here is the most promising of the several pictures I took: This was taken looking parallel to the road as opposed to the usual direction as I was measuring the distance from the fence, not the square post. I also took 2 stereo pictures by moving my camera horizontally using its panning guide. Here is the best of the two stereo shots. (They seem to have a slightly exaggerated 3D effect.) With this one, you must cross your eyes slightly to get a stereo view. This lower one is for straight viewing, like with the antique stereo viewers. (I can do the former quite easily, but the latter is very difficult for me, but for some people, the opposite is true.) I'm not even sure the second one works. Unfortunately, now that I look at these stereo pictures, the part that looks like it might have a square is not as clear since these stereo views are slightly from the side, not looking directly down.

Kool ! Also, as a cross-check, you might be able to do a sighting along the bearing line from MY0235 to MY4964 to make sure that your calculated location of MY0235 is on that bearing.

pgrig - I recommend establishing a temporary survey point X west of the line between MY0235 and its RM1. Measure the bearing from RM1 to X. (Be sure to it is True, not magnetic.) The difference (turning angle) between this bearing and the datasheet's bearing from MY0235 to RM1 can be called a. The distance between RM1 and MY0235 is known from the datasheet. Call it B. Measure the distance from RM1 to X and call this distance C. So, now you have a triangle made of points MY0235, RM1, and X. Two lengths of two sides (B and C) are known, along with the angle between them (a). Next calculate 2 items: The angle at point X between looking from X to RM1 and looking from X to MY0235. Call this angle b. The distance from point X to MY0235. Call this distance A. From a math formula book: A = sqrt [ (B^2 + C^2 -2BC*cosine(a) ] sine(b/2)= sqrt [ (p-C)*(p-A)/(A*C) ] where p= (A+B+C)/2 so take the inverse sine of the square root above and multiply by 2 to get b. The alternative for getting b is: cos(b/2) = sqrt [ p*(p-B )/(A*C) ] So, to get to the station from RM1, you will need to measure 2 bearings (RM1 to X, and X to MY0235) and 2 distances (RM1 to X, and X to MY0235). You will probably need to bring a 2 or 3 stakes for the sightings. Edit to take out smiley replacement of part of a formula.

Groundspeak.

This is a prime situation where projecting a waypoint with your GPS would be most expedient! Since this is a location adjusted station, projecting a waypoint with a GPSr would be less accurate than just looking for the station directly with the GPSr. pgrig- I didn't see that the RM was opposite the addition. Still, if you have a precise enough compass (mine will read to ½ degree, but in practice the accuracy of reading more like +/- 2 degrees or something), you could actually survey around the building to the mark with perhaps more accuracy than your GPSr would afford in looking for it directly. You'd have to do some trig analysis to see what your error-radius would be like over the distances of the 2 or 3 shots you'd have to take around the building, and assume a +/- 2 degree compass reading standard deviation. Umm the standard deviation increases as the square root of the number of shots taken and..... heh, well it would be fun to work on. The point of that is to not plan to take too long of survey legs, more shorter ones would probably afford better accuracy. As I recall, with a 2 degree accuracy range, 30 foot legs are sort of optimum.

pgrig - I certainly agree that there should be some 'personal' or 'forum' space on the Groundspeak server for uploading pictures for the forum to link to. I'm sure all of us here in the benchmark section would agree that we work on a lot of technical problems here in the benchmark forum that are visual in nature. It seems silly to have to use free sites, spoof the avatar section, or use fake or archived geocache spaces, and take all the extra steps to do so. I think that, until you get an answer or at least an acknowlegment of the issue from Groundspeak, you should not drop it. The problem is to get their attention on this request - perhaps none of them have read this thread yet. If no answer shows up here after a while, you could try emailing them. From experience, it may take some weeks to get an answer.

It is true that establishing a waymark has a few dropdown menu items (most of which are optional) and therefore takes a few more seconds than logging a benchmark in the geocaching benchmark site (which has 2 dropdown menus), but then most benchmarks waymarked have no coordinates, no description, no stamping, no agency identified, no go-to information, etc. so the idea is to supply these things since they aren't already done for you by the NGS. Certainly it could be said that finding a benchmark that isn't in the NGS/Geocaching database is neither fun nor interesting, and doing a log for it is simply a thankless chore. However, others feel that all of it is fun - finding a benchmark, especially after specifically looking for one in a likely place such as an old post office building, an old bridge, BM on a topo map, is a thrill, and establishing your find on the internet with a picture or two is part of the fun of the finding of it. I was looking for some more free picture posting websites like tinypic but all the ones I saw today required login names, etc.

I'd recommend measuring from RM1 and then using a metal detector. HALIBUT PT 136 RM 1 30.016 METERS 34810

Alternatives for posting a picture in the forum (all require your picture be uploaded to the web first): 1. The avatar method is one alternative. 2. The method of using an archived cache or unpublished cache space that AZcachemeister mentioned is another alternative. I don't know what an archived cache or an unpublished cache are and don't know how to use them for this purpose. Maybe someone can explain this. I assume it involves making a new geocache just to make a storage place to put pictures. I've never made a new geocache, unpublished, archived, or regular. 3. Making a waymark for the marker in the U.S. Benchmarks category. 4. Publish your picture in a free picture hosting website. I did this for an experiment here. In this experiment, I used www.tinypic.com. After over a year, the picture still shows. Certainly this is long enough to answer or finish with the usual question - "I found a benchmark, it isn't in the database, can anyone tell me anything about it.". I guess I could gather a bunch of current free picture hosting websites and write about them here, posting the same benchmark picture on each for another experiment. I agree that alternative #1 has several steps and could be confusing and #2 might involve even have more steps. I recommend #3 because, although it also involves some steps to do (making a waymark), at the end of the process, instead of just a picture, you have a complet log of your find, with the coordinates you got from your GPS receiver, your pictures, and your description of it. The very simplest method, though, is to use a free picture hosting site, and although we don't know how long it will last, it will be more than enough time to finish asking the question, and get answers based on the picture. At the end of all that or alternatives #1 and #2, if you don't use #3 above, then you still have no log of it, only some forum posts.

Rev Mike - We have asked this kind of question of Deb Brown at the NGS. We have asked it about both horizontal control marks and vertical control marks. Her answer to us has indicated that if we have found anything that we're sure was a remnant of the monumentation to post found poor. The examples have included a vertical control where a disk had been mounted on top of a square cement post and what was found was only the lower section of the post - no disk, no hole, no stem. Yet, she said to log it as found poor. This is not to be taken lightly and to log found -poor for any hole in cement or any broken cement post in the vicinity of where a mark was supposed to be. It has to be really good evidence of the monumentation of the correct marker. I would go so far as to say that if the disk isn't found, then a photo of the suspected remains should be sent to Deb (as was done in the cases above) and let her decide and tell you the answer. Until she says it could be logged as found-poor, then it's a not-found. I think that having a goal to get some marks categorized as Destroyed is not good. The NGS leans hard over toward the idea of getting things logged as either not-found or found-poor, rather than destroyed. This direction of leaning should therefore be used by us as well. This leaning makes logical sense. If a surveyor needs to use an existing mark, then a revised go-to, possibly with GPS handheld coordinates in the case of a vertcal control for the obvious remains of the mark, is better than the mark's existence being hidden (not published anymore) because of its being previously categorized as destroyed. The surveyor will want to be able to make their decision in the field whether or not to use the mark, based on the specifications of their particular project.

I don't know if you'd consider them historic, but you might ask the USGS office for a quad or two of horizontal control mark information.

I just now tried this with EW1435. I get the same results with my old Netscape 7.2, Internet Explorer 6.0, and Google Chrome 0.2. The results are: ========================================== Your request has resulted in an error. You may choose to retry your previous request. Or you may tell us what you were doing when this error occurred. ========================================== Other PIDs from other parts of the country have the same result. The datasheets all show OK, but clicking on "Log this Benchmark" results in the error screen. The URLs show up as this: http://www.geocaching.com/mark/log.aspx?WP=HW0250

IMHO, FizzyCalc works better than Forward since it allows different input formats. It does lots of other stuff too.

That happened to me yesterday also. Then it was back online. I think it was just some temporary system maintenance or reboot. I haven't heard of any movement planned.

I think you don't need to be extremely formal. PACK IN APPROXIMATELY 0.70 MILES ON AN OVERGROWN TRAIL TO THE MARK. Here is the last part of one I sent in: HW3293'PARK AND FOLLOW THE ORANGE-BLAZED TRAIL UP THE RIDGE, TURN RIGHT ONTO HW3293'THE BLUE-BLAZED TRAIL AND AT THE TOP OF THE RIDGE, TURN LEFT ALONG THE HW3293'RIDGE-TOP TO THE STATION. You could add how much elevation to climb, the time to walk, how close the mark is to the trail, and which side of the trail it is on, etc., or none of the above, your choice. I guess the main idea is to give sufficient information to walk right to the mark without worrying about how much computer memory space is used to describe it. I probably should've written more for HW3293, a nice old chiseled triangle mark.

Yes, I've had the noaa declination site bookmarked for a long time, but I'm quite sure that the topozone declination number was automatically up-to-date and definitely not what was printed on a paper map. The replacement topo sites don't seem to have the declination posted that way.

pgrig - My answers to your 3 questions: 1. As others have said, NGS stations are often seen occupied or evidence of recent use is seen. 2. (The implied question of monumentation rates.) The NGS database certainly does have a large decline in the number of PIDs monumented per year. However there are very recent monumentations of disks that are not in the NGS database. It could be that local databases have become more useful in recent years as compared to decades ago, or perhaps more to the point, local reliance on the national database may have become less for some reason. There is also a saturation effect - with over 700,000 NGS stations around, setting more is less important than when there was a lot less stations around. 3. Some disks were monumented for early and later mapping purposes that are now no longer as generally needed. Many of the mountaintop disks were put there to replace holes drilled in the 1800's for initial mapping of the area, but these days, to build a new McDonalds or a municipal building, it is not nesessary to take a reading from a 1890 mountaintop station 20 miles away; instead a 1960 station down the street can be used. The 1960 station was probably established for building purposes, not mapping purposes.

GPX Navigators - The benchmark PV0523 is the center of the top of the tower. So, you can log PV0523 without climbing to the top, same as with a radio tower benchmark. Certainly if someone does climb to the top, they can log PV0523 as well. The disk that people find near the ranger station is a U.S.G.S. mark that is not in the NGS database and so is not in Groundspeak's copy of it either. A find of that USGS mark is not a find of PV0523, even though it is more difficult to find. It is possible that there is some other disk at the top of Devils Tower, but I doubt it too. If there is such a disk, it is not in the NGS database.

One thing I miss from Topozone is the local magnetic declination being shown in the corner of the map.

That's a tough call. I didn't see your picture yet, but a disk depression is pretty hard to mistake for those who are experienced in seeing disks mounted in solid rock. There is no certainty in this kind of case. Whether you log found or not found must be based on your good judgement while being there - how obvious is the high point, etc. An interesting case to consider is the high point of Mount Washington where a different disk replaced PF0951, very likely in the same hole. If that replacement disk was taken, and a drill hole remained..... I would not log MY4714 as destroyed, because there is some evidence (although not proof) of a find of KNOBBY 1935 to be seen and judged by a professional. By the way, the datasheet for MY4714 seems to me to be somewhat irregular. The original 1935 designation still stands although the mark was reset in 1979 as "KNOBBY MGS 1935 1979". Unfortunately, there is no _STAMPING data element in the NGS datasheet either.

Well I hope to see a square impression !

It turns out that I will be in Luray this weekend celebrating a birthday, so I'm hoping for a chance to go check out this chiseled square.

Difficult Run - Sorry, but I cannot see the chiseled square. I read the datasheet's details and still don't see the square. I see some vague scratchings here and there, but no square. Perhaps there's some relief on the rock that can't be seen in a picture. Maybe a rubbing would help?

Thank you, George, very interesting ! OK, so probably the "palm, sewing" might be one of these sewing awls. I have one somewhere in the attic. I used it for making rope climbing and descending equipment. I never thought of making a book with one.

Here's a list of stuff in George's list that is puzzling/unknown to me: 12 ammeters, pocket 12 pins, adjusting (spare) 1 radio receiver, battery-operated short wave [i assume this is for listening to WWV or even CHU] 8 tribrach plates, aluminum (4 pairs) 1 hectograph (duplicator) [interesting to read about in wikipedia] 1 palm, sewing 22 signal notices, metal [are these witness posts?] strips, copper (as needed) record books, 1 palm, sewing 2 spoons, digger’s [is this a trowel?] Anyone know what these things are?