Black Dog Trackers

Rule #3 of the U.S. Benchmarks Waymarking category: "3. Coordinates based on reading your GPS receiver are required."

I agree. I have some pictures of disks and I know right where they are, but I didn't take coordinates then, so I will have to go back and do that if I want to Waymark them.

Since the NGS has changed to supplying only statewide datasheet files, I put a new feature in ngsread to filter with a list of counties specified. So, even though you're reading from a statewide file, the program will only output the marks that are in the county or counties that you specify. Also this new version allows you to optionally specify a list of one or more USGS quadrangles for an even narrower selection. It has many other searching filters as well, including a radius filter. Ngsread is for reading NGS datasheet files to optionally produce: .gpx files for transfer to a GPS receiver .kml files for viewing marks in Google Earth .html files for use in paperless benchmarking or researching with a PC The files produced only include those benchmarks that pass the filtering criteria you specify. In Google Earth, the benchmark icon pop-ups contain all the verbal recovery notes, the box score, and just about everything else on the datasheet. Ngsread also calculates the positions of reference marks (only based on adjusted marks!) and makes icons for them as well. There are many different options for labeling benchmarks' icons. The html files can be viewed by pointing your browser to your c:\ drive and navigating to the html directory where the html benchmark files are that ngsread made based on your criteria. Each benchmark's html file includes a link table to the nearest 10 benchmarks. The new ngsread website is here. The website has a link to a screenshot of a Google Earth map with a popop activated, and a screenshot of a benchmark's html file (only part of the proximity table is showing).

TillaMurphs - Nice finds and beautiful pictures! I saved up one of them for the next post to the benchmark picture thread if you don't.

Paved over isn't destroyed. Here's an example. I should have taken measurements from two of the concrete-filled poles!

I don't know, I think it would be more entertaining to have a geocaching micro behind each disk!

I'm guessing they were purchased from a disk supplier's reject pile.

In order to log, you don't have to take a picture and you don't have to submit a picture. For most of us though, we like to take 2 pictures, one close-up and one from a few feet away with the disk in view, and maybe some interesting scenery behind it.

Hi Yinnies - Welcome to benchmark hunting! A place to read about benchmark hunting in general is the benchmark FAQ page. Yes, you can check your GPS receiver's accuracy but only with a disk that is horizontally adjusted. The true bench mark disks will not be good for that. An example of what you need is this mark. Two lines under the coordinates are these words "location is ADJUSTED". If a benchmark's datasheet says "location is SCALED" don't try to use it for checking your GPS receiver.

I went to the source website for DSWORLD today. The website has only version 2.06. I noticed that I had version 2.05, so I downloaded and installed version 2.06 from the website today with no problems whatsoever. I rum windows xp here. The program works fine. The locations indicated by icons on the Google Earth map are correct. The only issue I have with it is that a few of the stations have duplicate labels and 2 kinds of icons superimposed.

I'd put it in your NGS recovery report. It's possible that they will upgrade CY4680 with your HH2 coordinates. It appears to have scaled coordinates now. You might try sending them to MRAS as per this thread.

Hmmm, that's creepy. I guess you could write the webmaster. Alternatively, there is one here. A few months old, but not so bad.

Hi switchback166, Get NGS state files from here. I think the archive URL is no longer used.

I'd go for N or P 231.

grufftymilo - Apparently Groundspeak has decided not to add any more benchmark databases to their geocaching site. I don't understand why not, they did a pretty good job of parsing in the NGS database in 2000. They did indicate that they would import other databases if someone emailed them the source but this has never happened. So a direct answer to your question would be - go ahead and write them, but its 99% likely that nothing will come of it. They already know about the UK databases because there are links to them in their UK benchmarks Waymarking site. Groundspeak did make a new kind of website - Waymarking, and that includes a loggable area for UK benchmarks. For whatever reason, however, Groundspeak keeps the Waymarking log counts and things totally separate from geocaching and geocaching-benchmarking. By the way, geocaching-benchmarking counts are not added to geocaching counts anyway. Here's a related topic that may interest you.

Hi, Growf, and welcome to benchmark hunting ! The datasheet for JZ0987 says the disk is designated A 142. The one you have pictured doesn't have that stamping. Also, the JZ0987 disk is a Coast and Geodetic Survey disk. The one pictured is mounted by Hamilton County Engineer. So that's not the right disk. This is not to say that it wasn't moved from where the quarter is, but it isn't the right disk anyway. Even if it was, if it's moved, it is no longer JZ0987 a particular disk at a particular location. So you should report not found for this one. Uploading your pictures of the quarter and the Hamilton County disk would be good anyway, just to say that these items are not JZ0987.

Papa-Bear-NYC - Beautiful pictures !!! Excellent web story !!! Here's a critique: The init. page has the big picture which is nice, a list of days with a summary of each, a click-place called Next Section, and another site index on the bottom of the page. It took some exploring to see what was going on - it wasn't clear at first. The big picture has 10 or so photos, but it's unknown how they relate to the days listed in the body of the page. Best pictures of the trip, I guess. The "Next Section" button was mysterious. Next week? Next state? What would it be? It turned out to just be going to Thursday. There's already 2 other ways to get to Thursday on the page! By the way, I think perhaps all "Next Section" and "Previous Section" buttons might be better labeled like "Saturday" and "Friday". I explored the click-jump called "Click here for a complete set of albums from these hikes". I did and found pictures that obviously would take me to ..... some dates. On the previous page were names of days of the week with no dates. Now, I'm needing to re-orient by date (with no days of the week labels)! On the complete set of albums page was a map - light green with yellow writing - a bit of an eye test. This time labeled with dates and names. The yellow writing would be far better if it was another color or had a black-outline font. I never could make out the bottom place in yellow - it looks kinda like "Mayflower" (until I went back to the index and saw the name in black). I click on the photo-jump for October 5. Excellent pics there too, of course! I click on a couple to make the picture big. Down on the lower right is a click-jump back to the main October 5 page. Uh-oh, now how do I get back to the 'Complete set of albums from these hikes" page with the map and the photo-jumps for the 5 days. No place to click to get back there and that's where I wanna go. So, I had to wade back through my exploration with the browser's back-arrow. I go to one of the days pages and its narrative. Fun and easy to read - just like being there! But well maybe it could be a tiny bit better. I read the narrative and looked at the pictures, but they are not explicitly related. For instance, on Sunday, one of the pictures is called "Fairly easy going through mostly open woods". What would be cool is to have that exact same phrase highlighted in red or something in the narrative when that picture was taken! I didn't see that phrase in there, did I miss it? Anyway, that would be a cool way to make the site more dynamic. For each day, I saw the topo Google maps, and the driving directions Google map, but no sketch drawing on either of where you walked. The narrative is mostly about the walk, and it would be nice to be able to relate it to one of the maps, preferably the topo of course! All in all, an excellent travelogue website, and great pictures too! Thank you for sharing it!

Hi tireman - Concerning MC0943, the datasheet says the designation of the mark is: "906 3074 WL 108 USLS" The mark must have this designation stamped on it to be a find of MC0943. Also, the history of this mark says that it was monumented by USLS (United States Lake Survey, according to this list). The "monumented by" is not always totally accurate, though. The history does say that the mark was monumented in 1935, but the disk pictured is year 92 (1992). If you click on "view original datasheet" on the geocaching benchmark's page, you will see a "STAMPING" variable and the disk must say the same exact thing to be a find. So, the disk pictured is not MC0943. Instead it is a US Army Corps of Engineers disk monumented in 1992 with the designation 606. It is likely that MC0943 is gone. Concerning MC0944, the same problem exists. The MC0944 disk is a US Engineers (predecessor of US Army Corps of Engineers) disk with a stamping of "909 S4". The disk pictured is a US Army Corps of Engineers disk with a stamping of "15 92". The most recent report of MC0944 is 1980, 12 years before the disk pictured was mounted. Concerning MC0945, the designation (the identity of this particular disk) is "906 3074 D". The monumentation note says NOS, which is the National Ocean Survey. The designation has been worn off the disk pictured, but it certainly isn't a NOS disk. It is another US Army Corps of Engineers disk instead. So, the situation here is not the datasheets that are in error, it is the 'finds' that are in error. The disks pictured are not finds, so the find logs are wrong. Unfortunately, it appears that the disks described in the datasheets are gone. Not necessarily so, however - they still might be hiding there! It is important to remember that there are hundreds of thousands of disks that are not in the database we use, and many of them are fairly near where the ones we are hunting were located. Benchmark hunting is tricky and sometimes very challenging. Unlike geocaching, what you're looking for might have been gone for 50 years or more, so there's a psychological challenge too. The benchmark hunting FAQ is another good place to read about benchmark hunting. In particular, in the cases you brought up, there is an article about making sure you found the right disk. Another very important thing to know about right way is the difference between scaled and adjusted location disks. Also, since you found 3 disks that are not in the database we use, you could read about that here. I hope this helps solve this puzzle of 3 disks and hope you have more good hunting in the future!

So, what I would say is this: The station MOUNT ELBERT (KL0637) is not a disk. Instead it is a copper bolt, 1/2 inch in diameter and leaded into a boulder. Pictured so far are only its reference marks "No1" and "No2". They are not a find of the MOUNT ELBERT station. To find the bolt from the disk marked "No1", go 70.8 feet Southwest (215 degrees True). To find the bolt from the disk marked "No2", go 33.5 feet North (12 degrees True).

Well what I was meaning was to give directions from the reference marks to the bolt. I realize that means reversing what's in the box score, but it will make it the most likely that people will use the information to find the bolt mark from what they can find (the ref. disks) without having to think at high altitudes.

frex3wv- I suggest posting a note on that mark's page. Give distances and directions from both reference marks (which seem to be findable) to the leaded bolt. Generally people don't bring the box score information, but they might bring a copy of the GC.com data sheet and its logs. I did that for this mark. It looks like 2 people may have found it, but I see no photo proof yet.

Here's one that's around 129 false found logs so far. I think there are even some worse ones out there.

In addition to what Bill93 said, the "underground mark" is a few feet below the surface. Us amateur benchmark hunters do not try to dig down and try to get a look at any underground mark. The sentence you quoted was not meant to imply that the reference marks are underground. It was only referring to the underground mark as being underground in a rather terse way. Reference marks are on or near the surface level like most regular disks.

Well no one has responded to this so I guess I'll try to get this to the next step. My Garmin is old so I get labeled points, but no "mouse over". What model Garmin do you have? I think most us us who load lots of PIDs into a GPSr use one of the several programs that make a GPX file from an NGS datasheet file. However you seem to be asking about how to load a bunch of some other kind of data into a GPSr. I don't know how you're using Excel to get points into a Garmin. Are you using Excel to make a comma delimited file first? What kind of file are you transferring to Excel?

I looked in the data for MONUMENTED NGS and found 6,040 disk type markers monumented 1971 or earlier. The champion of them all is AE9127, a traverse disk "monumented" by the NGS in 1852. The summary by date is: Date Total 1852 1 1863 1 1887 1 1897 3 1904 1 1917 2 1921 1 1923 1 1927 7 1928 1 1931 8 1932 2 1933 5 1934 44 1935 16 1936 3 1937 1 1938 2 1940 4 1941 3 1942 4 1943 5 1944 3 1945 1 1946 2 1947 4 1948 5 1949 1 1950 2 1951 1 1952 9 1953 3 1954 5 1955 1 1956 1 1957 4 1958 1 1959 3 1960 5 1961 2 1962 4 1963 6 1964 10 1965 5 1966 6 1967 5 1968 4 1969 11 1970 3401 1971 2419 Grand Total 6040 I guess almost all of these [ Condition: MONUMENTED, Report By: NGS ] mean not actually monumented by NGS but .... something else.