lost02

Ernmark - guess finding Destroyed Marks is more common than I thought. For KW2805, the submitter was ANTHONY HANLON, and the entry was made by Deb (DB/NGS), but there’s no evidence in the Destroyed entry who the submitter is affiliated with. In my Destroyed entries I see: Reported by NGS, (DB), and my name - no mention of GEOCAC or JM.

Klemmer & TeddyBearMama - We’ve never actually gone out to look for destroyed marks before. It looks like you and Papa-Bear-NYC have actually done it and succeeded in un-destroying Stations! I know that when we submit destroyed Stations to Deb we have some write-up along with the pictures. The write-up portion never gets into the entry - I assume Deb keeps it somewhere else. It would be interesting to see what was written. Right, you can’t go by the Geocaching database when submitting reports to the NGS!

Papa-Bear-NYC - Yeah, I guess I should have been more specific about “removed”. If you use the Recovery by PID page and don’t select “Include Destroyed Marks”, you get the “No Marks Found” page with an indication it was Destroyed. If you do select the “Include Destroyed Marks” you do get the Data Sheet. I just assumed that once it was marked as Destroyed you couldn’t log anything in it unless someone from the NGS (Deb) did something special to allow a new entry - like actually finding a Destroyed Mark so it can be un-destroyed. We have found some “Mark Not Found”, but never found a Mark that was Destroyed - they must have been some great finds!

I was recently looking though some of our past recoveries and noticed that one Station that we submitted to Deb to be destroyed (and was marked as destroyed in 2007) has recently received a new “Mark Not Found” recovery. It appears that even though the Mark has been “removed” from the database, the system still permits new recoveries to be added. Before we go out looking for Stations I look at the latest NGS Data Sheet to ensure the recovery will be logable. A one month overlap of duplicate recoveries can and will occur when two or more individuals recover the same Station before the database has had a chance to be updated, but before submitting recoveries to the NGS one should look at the most recent NGS Data Sheet to ensure that the new recovery is actually needed.

Paul - did you check to see if the monument felt stable?

I would say if the top foot of the monument was broken off I would take pictures of the top half broken off and laying on its side on the ground and send them to Deb. I’ve seen a number of marks like this and she usually marks them as Destroyed. If the monument that is still in the ground has evidence of the drill hole, or the disk is still monumented, it may be poor if it is only tilted slightly. If a monument has been broken off and someone just plops the broken monument back in the ground I don’t believe it is helpful (actually it’s not good) - especially if a surveyor doesn’t know that someone just re-monumented the station by sticking it in the ground. In your case it would probably be pretty obvious to a surveyor that it’s a bad station because the arrow is pointing in the wrong direction, but in other cases it may not be so obvious. Also, as foxtrot_xray indicates, if there is an underground mark I wouldn’t identify the station as destroyed if only the surface mark is destroyed.

Was it common to document with Metric measurements in the 40’s? I thought is was a 60’s thing??? Also, the other two measurements are in Yards. Hey, the Power Squad found it in 1996.

CallawayMT - A lot of the stations out here in the valley/desert are easily identifiable as usable for satellite observations, there are some that easily don’t pass the NGS guidelines, and there are some that we’re not sure about. The biggest questionable offenders are the ones near high tension lines. I know that sometimes even our handheld unit can be affected by them, so we just mark them as unknown. Another thing we look for is who and how that last reported satellite observation was made. We typically don’t mess with an observation by the NGS (we may even mark it as unknown so the NGS observation remains unchanged), though if it’s an obvious one we will update the observation. We have seen some rather odd observations from some other groups. Another area of potential question is for stations that don’t appear to be easy to occupy. If you can’t occupy it then how can you observe satellites from it? I’ve seen the link for the Washington Monument, but I’m sure that’s the exception, not the rule. If we think it’s hard/impossible to occupy then we mark it as unknown. Glad you like to see the photos. It does take some extra time to take them, record the direction, then resize and publish them. It would be a lot easier to skip taking them, but it does seem like they have some value - plus it give us a reason to use our digital cameras.

CallawayMT - good post and picture. I do have a question/point. Is the question “How do I answer the question when logging something with the NGS”? or is the question “Is it true that…”? In other words, the NGS seems to have a “standard” way to answer their question (they have a short write-up where you answer the question). It looks from your picture the “standard” NGS answer would be “No”. However, as you indicate using your experience/good timing/enough time/etc. you can take a NGS “No” and make it a “Yes”. If database says “Yes” then you should expect that you can get satellite observations without doing anything special, but if it says ”No” then you should expect that if you can use satellite observations it will take some extra effort on your part.

Ever since we recovered DU1172 GC NGS I've always checked to see if the coordinates have changed. Haven't found many that went from Scaled to Adjusted, but I've also see many of the Scaled changes that Klemmer noted.

maconart - Hi. It looks like the datasheet says the stamping should be "712.282 713 A", which is what's on the disk.

RazorbackFan - Hi. I'm no expert, and haven’t been benchmarking as long as PFF, but my understanding is that if the disk is unreadable then it should be marked as Poor. Poor doesn't mean it's necessarily unstable, it can also mean that it is unreadable. Based on the your picture of the disk it appears to be totally unreadable (to me) - there’s no way you could tell what Station it is other than reading the description from the database. Based on your other data you could mark it as found, but I think it would be Poor. In the description you would indicate the setting is stable, but the stamping is not legible because the disk is marred. Here's a little guide I got from Deb a while ago: Good - station setting is stable, disk or mark is stable and readable. Poor - station setting is stable but disk or marker is marred or gone. Destroyed - setting is unstable with or without the marker.

I hate digging holes and coming up empty. I think about half the time we come up empty. I bet even Mr. Thompson may not even know the real answer! I think we would have to ask the CGS crew(s). Maybe as jwahl suggested the answer may lie in some records, or as CallawayMT suggested some local surveyors or the County Surveyor may know the history of the monuments out there. I’m just glad that most recoveries aren’t this ambiguous!

AZcachemeister – thanks for the information and pictures – you sure get around! We’ve talked a little about this issue and I have some added thoughts. As you said, at the adjusted coordinates for ET1042, there isn’t any visible monument. We did some simple probing for something, and it sounds like you did a little more, but still nothing. If you use a projection tool, and plug in the coordinates of FENCE and the distance in the datasheet from ET1042, you get the coordinates for ET1042, so it seems that at least the limited description in ET1042 is correct. Unfortunately they didn’t describe what the monument actually looked like. Another interesting point is that in the initial description for FENCE in 1924 they identified THOMPSON BOUNDARY MONUMENT NO. 2, and then in 1962 they started to identify COUNTY MONUMENT 3 and THOMPSON BOUNDARY MONUMENT NUMBER 3 (which they state are at a different location then #2), and they stop referencing Monument #2. RABBIT and ET1045 are similar, but a little more interesting, because we both found a metal spike in a drill hole at exactly where it was described in ET1045 (we used a measuring tape to verify the distance). 1) I think you found and took pictures of boundary monuments with the current designation of #3 and #4. Note1: If the Designation for ET1042 was something like POST, and the Designation for ET1045 was HOLE, then there probably wouldn’t be an issue. I think there only reason there is an issue is because of the designation “THOMPSON MONUMENT” and there are THOMPSON MONUMENTS in the area. Note2: If Monument #3 is ET1042, and Monument #4 is ET1045, then wouldn’t the datasheets for ET1042 and ET1045 be completely erroneous? The Designation would be wrong (wrong monument number), the adjusted coordinates would be wrong, and the description would be wrong (they reference a distance and direction to FENCE and RABBIT, which would be wrong). We haven’t made as many recoveries as you, but these two stations have more questions than any we’ve seen.

K&T – thanks for info. Your RMs look a lot like this RM (from CZ2166): Here’s a close up of ET1045. The top is kinda ragged with a smooth section to the left. It’s also a square peg (in a round hole ). The top could be what was monumented, but it really looks pretty “sloppy”.

Kewaneh - thanks for the info. I guess if were were around in the 20's we would know good old Thompson too. Here's the one we found ( ET1045 - it appears to have seen better days): We'll be doing a little research and probably make more visits.

CallawayMT – thanks for the update. I added our log (with photos) to ET1045. The actual monument looks like a stone instead of concrete – especially with the drill hole in the middle. I'm assuming there was some sort of disk on top that indicated it was Monument #3.

CallawayMT - Unfortunately there’s no description of the monument (I guess everyone back then knew what they looked like) – take a look here ET1042. We did find the poor remains of ET1045 (again no description), and RABBIT - ET1046 referrers to ET1045 as a Thompson Boundary Monument. I was wondering what they looked like when they were monumented. I did a search but couldn’t find anything specific (like what they looked like).

Does anyone know what a “Thompson Boundary Monument” is supposed to look like?

Hi Deb – thanks. It gives us a good reason to get out and about every other week, and thanks for your email support!

xpkranger - Go to Find a Benchmark, Other search options, select By Coordinates, enter your coordinates, and then click Find Benchmarks. Looks like RM3 (DG0739) and RM4 (DG0740) are in the same area.

We found a similar mark that is in the database DV1017. The only ones that appear to be in the database that are in Utah and start with T9S are: LO0041 and LO0042 (you can the stamping in the “view original datasheet” links.

Lee - thanks. When I upgrade my H2O I guess I'll be able to upgrade my SD card too. Thanks for the info!

I thought the limit was 1GB. Does Lowrance support 2GB cards?

Holograph – thanks for work and the map viewer update. I don’t know why the NGS can’t co-operate and get things posted on schedule.