Black Dog Trackers

That's the kind I named the "frisbee ring" type of USGS mark when I put a reference for one in BuckBrooke's list.

These are cool, and it's excellent that real surveyors are involved in setting these professionally, but I'm curious, are these going to be officially entered into state, county, or other municipality benchmark databases, in other words, are they official?

Fun game ! True True To to Meg Magnetic All add The the While West Meg Magnetic The to True True At add The the Feast East Who is Meg (Mag)? The one you're attracted to !

Yikes ! Excellent rhymes, George L ! Let me try that..... STANDS FOR MEANING Can Compass Compass reading Dead Deviation Angle between compass and magnetic field* Men Magnetic Actual direction of the local magnetic field Vote Variation Angle between magnetic and true** Twice True Geographic north At Add (as in arithmetic) Elections? East Direction of correction STANDS FOR Timid True Virgins Variation Make Magnetic Dull Deviation Companions Compass At Add Weddings West

Hi Sean's Mom - There's really nothing we can do about those incorrect logs. Writing a note like you did is really the best thing. Sometimes people read it and learn, as you can see below.... Check out MT WASH; 115 incorrect finds and counting....

pgrig - I would agree that setting up your own website would be the best way to demonstrate and chronicle finds-in-process, successes, etc. Many of us have made our own benchmark website for one reason or another. I have made websites using a text editor with html code directly. Later on, I sometimes used Netscape 7.2 (the last release that included an html editor). There are many html editors of course, some free, some not. As for the USA Benchmarks site, it has 11 required questions: Your name for the mark Coordinates Country (dropdown) State (dropdown) Short Description Long Description Condition (dropdown) Designation Benchmark Agency (dropdown) Monumentation Type (dropdown) Find Type (radio button choice) The rest are optional. I really don't think these are too many questions considering that the category was made for benchmarks found without any known datasheet - no description, no coordinates, no to-reach, nothing at all. With almost half of the questions being dropdown menus I think it isn't really difficult to fill out, but we'd welcome any suggestions to make it easier and still be a fairly good approximation of datasheet information. To contact a category's managers and see who they are, click on the link to the right of "Managed By:" near the top of the category's page. Clicking on a name will get you to a send-message link. It is true that the USA Benchmarks category was only designed for logging finds (4388 currently) of things, same as the other 802 different categories of Waymarking.

Hi Johnnh_Quest - The Benchmark FAQ has a statement on that here.

I am truly sorry about this. The Waymarking site was set up for categories to be managed by committees. The US Benchmarks category has 5 people on the committee, including me, and two others who are major participants in the forum here. Fairly early on in the history of this category, there was a voting issue on not-founds, including a lot of email discussion on both sides. It was finally decided by vote that not-founds would not be allowed. A result of this was that I removed two not-founds that I had waymarked, based on an Arlington County, VA database. I looked for marks described in the database, and I didn't find two of the marks. After the vote, I went back and removed those waymarks. The prevailing opinion was that the US benchmarks Waymarking category would be for marks that are found, not for marks that were not found (even if they were described in a database). I don't think we have a major malfunction. I also don't think the result of the voting on the question of Waymarking not-founds is a major malfuction either. My personal culpability in this matter is that I saw your waymark but postponed declining it until after I figured out what I would say in the decline message. Someone else did that first, since I had been stalling for too long. It really hurts me to have to decline someone's waymark, especially someone that I have had good conversations with here in the forum, and I know that getting a notice that a waymark was declined hurts too - been there, had that. However, I fully intended to do so after I figured out what I would say. Another issue is that after that vote, I forgot to remove the choice of Not Found in the condition dropdown menu - bad management on my part. However, the rules do say that a closeup photo of the benchmark is required.

I certainly agree with that. Gone bridge abutments are much more difficult, as we know.

2oldfarts (the rockhounders) - I'd tend to report it as Found (in poor condition). You found very strong evidence of the mark so let a surveyor decide if they think it is where the mark was and can use it. I lean toward the perspective of a recovery report being for surveyors' use. I just can't 'get my head around' the idea of reporting, even just on the GC site, without that perspective solidly in mind, even assuming that chances are no surveyor will ever look at my GC report. pgrig - I certainly agree. It always makes me feel unfortable that, here in these forums, it seems that many people have a goal to get marks declared as destroyed on the NGS site or to call them destroyed in reports on the GC site. (This is not the case in this particular thread where the OP is asking a technical judgement question without bias.) It seems to some that getting a station declared destroyed is some kind of accomplishment. The problem is, as you point out, that then the station disappears as if it had never existed. Surveyors have no way to even consider using it then, assuming some fragment of it remains. The NGS leans 'hard over' toward not easily declaring marks as destroyed, and we should all adopt that same attitude, I think.

In the (not destroyed) camp of AZcachemeister, seventhings, and Holtie22, here are: 2 stations that have the wrong marker type (because of time going by, not concept, but anyway not accurate): Womelsdorf Reset Knob Reset and 2 stations that have an unmarked point: Ericssons Toe Lincoln ECC 1935 to go along with seventhings' NW 1=NATL ACAD OF SCI.

Klemmer & TeddyBearMama - Instead of acquiescing to the lowest common denominator of reporting, I think that advice on reporting given by us in these forums should be toward the "laudable goal" of using the NGS as a guide for writing recovery reports. This is important, I think because many benchmark hunters here soorner or later do NGS recovery reports. Advocating a double standard is confusing and essentially pointless, I think. Why not the best? In the case of this mark, I'd report Not Found. If I look for a mark and don't find it, psychologically, I'd prefer to believe that it is not there at all anymore (destroyed). However the 'high road' is to go ahead and report Not Found, with a description of the search, and perhaps any arguments as to why it could be considered destroyed. In the case of this mark, what could those arguments be?

I agree with Z15 on this. More specfiically - Geocaching site: Not Found NGS site: Not found Destroyed should not be used on either site unless the marker is found out of position, or the mark's physical mounting location has ceased to exist.

I believe it means that the location of each tower's base was based on traverses to station RADIO, the nearby first order horizontal control mark (and so is EKLUTNA). The location was likely measured from a small structure erected just above the base. This is why the centers of the bases, not the tops of the towers, are the stations.

Amusing discussion. By the same logic that the top of the tower corresponds to the center of the base, then any point above the base could be thought of as the point. For instance, a tripod could be set up on the base and centered over the center of the base. Certainly without the tower being there, the utility of the geographic point of the center of the base is dramatically less useful - but not gone. Similarly one could set up a bilby tower above the center of the base and use that. On a tangential note (pun intended), I wonder about the movement of the top of a tall tower in the wind. I recall being on top of the WTC and the lateral movement was quite noticeable. Of course a 4-leg radio tower with a thousand triangles in it would be pretty steady, but still, I wonder how far it moves. A fairly steady breeze would possibly move the top an inch or two. We realize the whole thing is moot since intersection stations are anachronistic, but it's an interesting discussion anyway.

I agree with AZcachemeister on this. The marker type data element is not always 100% accurate. Sometimes it is incorrect, usually in those cases when the type is drill hole and yet a disk was installed in the hole in 1927. In this particular case, there is no marker type for center of tower base, so RADIO/TV TOWER was selected as representing this mark. Here is a vaguely similar mark. It is the center of the base of a former tower which also had a PID at the top (the navigation light). Unfortunately, the navigation light has some incorrect 'Found it=Didn't find it' entries.

I looked in the 2006 state .dat files. There are 872 PIDs with ECC in their name. Here is part of the list, looking around the middle of it: ===================================== NJ.TXT: JU2662 DESIGNATION - GOWDYS HOUSE ECCENTRIC NJ.TXT: JU2665 DESIGNATION - LOVELADIES ECC NJ.TXT: JU3041 DESIGNATION - HILL RM 2=ECC NJ.TXT: JU3117 DESIGNATION - NEWTON ECCENTRIC NJ.TXT: JU4102 DESIGNATION - RUM ECC NJ.TXT: KU3877 DESIGNATION - EASTMAN ECCENTRIC NJ.TXT: KV3552 DESIGNATION - SANDY HOOK LIGHTHOUSE ECC NJ.TXT: KV4036 DESIGNATION - WEEHAWKEN ECC 1933 NJ.TXT: KV4249 DESIGNATION - TRUST ECC 1933 NJ.TXT: KV4730 DESIGNATION - ELIZABETH ECC 2 NJ.TXT: KV4784 DESIGNATION - NEWARK ECC 1933 NJ.TXT: KV4787 DESIGNATION - ELIZABETH ECC 1933 NJ.TXT: KV4916 DESIGNATION - LEONARDO PIER REAR RANGE ECC NJ.TXT: KV5170 DESIGNATION - TOWER E ECC NJ.TXT: KV5175 DESIGNATION - TOWER G ECC NJ.TXT: KV5497 DESIGNATION - NJ 156 ECC NJ.TXT: KV5633 DESIGNATION - CAR ECC NJ.TXT: KV5674 DESIGNATION - TULL ECC NJ.TXT: KV5727 DESIGNATION - KERR ECC NJ.TXT: KV6947 DESIGNATION - NJ 156 ECC RM 1 =====================================

Hi Dradicus - You can read about such finds here in the Benchmark Hunting FAQ page.

Nice program, MRAS ! I noticed that if you don't choose horizontal and don't choose vertical, you get both. What, no link to Geocaching's Benchmark site??? Heh heh. What do the red and black boxes distinguish?

I was reviewing this excellent and fascinating saga and this question caught my eye... Good ol' internet .... Plane Triangle Solver.No doubt there are more out there, I just checked out this one. It does the job, all right. It's always amazing to me to see how much interest people (like the DCR folks) have in finding marks with us! The datasheet for this mark has a reference to an underground mark - odd since the station mark is said to be mounted in a surface boulder (in a 1943 note by the NGS(!) ) or an underground ledge (the 1953 note). It seems that perhaps ledge=bedrock to the 1953 writer. Hopefully the hole is not 1" off the edge of an underground ledge. The LARGE BOULDER FLUSH WITH THE GROUND really must be somewhere there, unless they blew it up with explosives or somethning.

I saw this funny name today: GIS 184 LIL DAVE SMOUSE. There's a bunch in the area with what look like people's names, like GIS 0578 KEVIN ELEVIN. I wonder who they are.

PFF - The author had to change the name from GeoCalc to FizzyCalc. It is the same program, though.

NGSREAD will show all the PIDs in a state and you can get it to label each one with its elevation. The NGSREAD page has the link to the NGS statewide datasheet files.

Hi NYC Fire Rider - The description of NA0367 says that the BM is about 2 feet below road level, not 2 feet below grade. If it did say 2 feet below grade, then yes, it would've been 2 feet below ground level in 1942. However, since it says 2 feet below road level, then it is fairly likely on the surface, although it doesn't say that explicitly. It does say 44 feet SW of the centerline or the road. Without leveling equipment, judging 2 feet below road level when the center of the road is 44 feet away would be tricky. Assuming that the road has not changed position since 1942, the best thing is to measure from the center (not the edge) of the road 44 feet SW at a few points along the road in a likely area. When you click on the MyTop link on the benchmark's page, you can see the BM mark (X marks the spot) and a good idea would be to scale on that map as best you can how far along the road the X is from the bend in the road. Even though this is a CGS mark, the USGS probably did the opposite thing and made their topo map show the bend in the road the right distance from the mark they were using. Is the gate post still there? Is the stone right-of-way fence still there? Use their measurements if they are. You probably know this already but since this is a scaled mark, it will not be where your GPS says it should be based on the coordinates, but if you do log it, be sure to include in your log the coordinates you measure at the mark. As for the box of rocks, I'd be taking the slate off if it is loose and probing around in there. If all you find under there between those rocks is dirt, probe some with a stiff wire or thin electronics screwdriver of something like that. You're looking for a boulder that might be slightly under the surface if it isn't totally obvious. If someone made a box of rocks, then it may be that the boulder the mark is mounted in may no longer be at or above the surrounding surface. Don't be distracted by that box of rocks if there is a boulder at the right distance from the center of the road!

I like my Suunto KB-14 compass. It is extremely durable, with no hinges, wires, mirrors, sharp edges, or complicated reading techniques, - a very sturdy aluminum case with a top and a side window. You hold the unit up to your eye and as you line up the image of the hairline with your target, through the window on the edge of the unit you can read the bearing that has markings to ½ degree. The one I bought many years ago has no declination adjustment, but I see they have models with that now.