MRAS

DSWorld 4.01 is now available here: http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/PC_PROD/PARTNERS/index.shtml

NGS is back online! Send in your photos, HH positions and recovery notes.

Guys, As a benefit of some data mining I did last year, I have .dat files of datasheets for the entire US and US territories that were extracted in August 2012 (August 2013 for MD) that you can work with in 'offline mode' in DSWorld. If you let me know what state you want, I can post them on my church ftp site. I have also posted an updated DSWorld.exe and DSWorld.chm on the same site that includes mechanisms for editing photos and HH positions in offline mode with datasheet files. I won't be able to post data to the NGS database until the shutdown is over, but the nos ftp site is still up and running, so you can submit your photos, HH positions, and recovery notes now. My church ftp site is: ftp://comediscoverwithus.com/Public/ Download the .dat file and put it in a folder on your hard drive. Then start DSWorld and click 'Work Offline'. Then open a state .dat file and split it. Then open a resulting county .dat file. Then you can view, print, etc. You can also export a .kml and then open it with google earth. Send me an email if you want me to post your state: marchershee@gmail.com

To get the PID for a RM, CBL, or AZ MK: 1) Start DSWorld (The latest version is 2.10.12 as of 09/16/11) 2) Click 'Stations > All NGS IDB > By State and County' from the main menu. 3) Select the State and County of Interest. 4) Click the NOAA bird. All marks in the NGS IDB will plot for the selected criteria including RMs, AZ MKs, Calibration Baseline Marks, Temporary Bench Marks, Destroyed Marks, as well as the publishable marks. Note - The scaled position of RMs, CBLs, and AZ MKs may be significantly different than their actual GPS position. Be sure to send in a recovery report with updated information when you recover one! Thanks. MRAS

Recovery info - There is a good tutorial in DSWorld's help system. DSWorld's recovery procedure is actually easier than using the web page, especially for multiple recoveries. Photos - Set your camera to 640 x 480 pixels so you will not need to resize or crop them for submittal. In .jpg format, this will give a reasonable file size. Check the DSWorld help for additional information.

NGS is still utilizing and maintaining data on passive marks for now and is still very interested in the quality of the data in the NGS IDB. The latest version of DSWorld is an attempt to improve on the existing recovery web page, 'http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/ngs-cgi-bin/recvy_entry_www.prl'. The recovery page has no provision for entering hand-held GPS positions, mark LOGOs, State and County corrections, no built-in spelling checker for text, etc. While GPS is an excellent tool for determining horizontal position to the sub-centimeter level, precise orthometric height (elevation) determination with GPS is still in the 2-5 cm range. To improve on this, precise gravity surveys are required (see NGS's GRAV-D program).

DSWorld V 2.10 is now available from NGS for plotting bench marks in Google Earth: 'http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/PC_PROD/PARTNERS/index.shtm' New tools for submitting photos, positions, recovery notes, State/County corrections, etc.! Download multiple datasheets by drawing a polygon around them in Google Earth! Each Google Earth bubble now contains a link to NGS's photos and Geocaching.com's mark details pages!

Attention Benchmarkers: DSWorld V 2.09 is now on the NGS website for download. New in Version 2.09: A selection for displaying stations by State and Designation has been added to the main menu. A selection for displaying OPUS DB points has been added to the main menu. Links are available within a OPUS DB plot to retrieve OPUS DB datasheets. The hand held position window now includes text boxes for recovery initials, date and condition. One can now submit a request to add a new agency symbol. DSWorld news added. Last handheld position load viewer added. File clean-up option added. New photo editing tools added. Transmission timeout setting option added.

I am assuming that all positions in .gpx files, which are usually from Navigation grade receivers, are HH2 positions. For marks that are positioned via GIS or Survey grade receivers, use the single-submission procedure in DSWorld.

The latest version of DSWorld automatically creates a .gpx file when you retrive the data for a county. Look in your 'C:\Documents and Settings\USERID\Application Data\DSWorld\' directory. Be sure to change the sign of the longitude for a positive West longitude and round off lat & lon seconds to 1 decimal after converting to DMS.

DSWorld V 2.08 is now available from NGS: http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/PC_PROD/PARTNERS/index.shtml With this version you can submit hand-held GPS positions of bench marks to their new ftp site.

If the point is both a horizontal and vertical control, both a square and a triangle will plot for the same point. You can turn off all horizontal by unchecking the horizontal folder, or turn off all vertical by unchecking the vertical folder. This feature was requested by NGS personnel.

Found the problem. The install program wanted to update the ieframe.dll file, which is part of Windows Explorer 8.0, and is not backwardly compatable with IE 7.0. Apparently Microsoft made some major changes to ieframe.dll from V 7 to V 8. The remaining .dll files that get installed have been around a while and are time-tested. It is likely that if any of these files already exist on your machine, the ones on your machine will be newer. If asked during installation, always keep your existing .dll files. To see what files are to be installed, you can open the SETUP.LST file with notepad. In any case, I have re-created the install without the ieframe.dll file and tested it on Windows XP and Vista. The good version has been posted on NGS's website and is 2.07.01. In regards to the truncaiton issue, the program will now retrive (and has since V 2.05 - see my post of April 2009) the postions of marks to whatever precision is in the NGS IDB. For horizontal control points, this will be to 5 decimal places. For most vertical control, this will be a scaled position (nearest second), unless a hand held or adjusted postion has been submitted for the point.

What version/date of ieframe.dll and msinet.dll do you have on your system, and what OS are you running?

DSWorld V 2.07 is now available from NGS: http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/PC_PROD/PARTNERS/index.shtml What's New: Version 2.07 Automatic .gpx and SA file creation added Edit Photo has been added. Submit Photo has been added Submit recovery web page link added Submit .gpx file procedure added Submit hand held GPS position procedure added Version 2.06 The program has been made 'Vista friendly'. 'State and County' has been added to the 'Everything' menu item. The 'Projects' menu item will now retrieve project information for GPS and Triangulation/Traverse projects. Be sure to uninstall the old version of DSWorld before installin the new!

The easiest way to send me bench marks positions is in .gpx format. After you capture the position as a waypoint, enter the PID for the mark name and the designation for the description. When you have positioned a number of them, download them to your PC and export the data as a .gpx file. Send the .gpx file as an attachment to: marchershee@gmail.com

Good news! NGS has improved the .prl script that provides the positional information for each mark. The lat/lon will now be to whatever precision is in the NGS IDB. For Horizontal Control, this will be to 5 decimals. For Vertical Control, it will be to the nearest second, 0.1 second, or 0.01 second. To take advantage of the improved precision, you need to get DSWorld V 2.05 available from: www.ngs.noaa.gov/PC_PROD/PARTNERS/index.shtml

DSWorld 2.04 has two ways of plotting marks. The first way is by 'Stations' which will plot all publishable marks for a county, project, or area. This procedure uses an NGS .prl script to create an output currently rounded to the nearest second of lat/lon (+- 100 ft). DSWorld then uses this output to plot the points in Google Earth. The second way, 'Everything', plots every mark in the NGS IDB within a 1-mile radius of the specified Lat/Lon, including publishable marks, reference marks, azimuth marks, calibration baseline marks, destroyed marks, temporary marks, etc. to whatever precision is in the NGS IDB for that mark. This does not include a computed position to an RM via the 'box score info'. The 'Everthing' procedure uses a different NGS servlet which returns the most accurate position for the point from the IDB, but is limited to a 1-mile radius from a given Lat/Lon. Note also that Google Earth aerial photography can be quite accurate in some areas of the country (+- 10 ft) or rather inaccurate in some areas (+-150 ft). To test the accuracy of the photography, get a hand-held position to a photo-identifiable point such an intersection, water tank, church spire, etc. and see where that appears in Google Earth. Once you recover an NGS mark and get a hand-held position on it, I can get the NGS IDB position upgraded. I typically submit a file of marks to NGS once a month.

For the PROJECT ID option, you need to know the NGS project accession number under which the survey was done. For instance, if you want to view all of the bench marks that were found and set as part of a recent survey at BWI airport, you can enter the project ID L27001.

DSWorld 2.04 is now available from: www.ngs.noaa.gov/PC_PROD/PARTNERS/index.shtml Be sure to uninstall your old version before installing the new. To plot publishable marks, start the program and click 'Stations>By State and County'. Next, select the state and then the county. You can use the defaults for Type and Stability. Then click the NGS symbol. The program will go to NGS's website and retrieve a 'PID list', generate the .kml file, and bring up GoogleEarth with all of the points plotted. If you want to plot everything in a 1-mi radius, including non-publishable marks, click 'Everything' and enter the latitude and longitude and then click the NGS symbol. Ex: N382203 W0753539

Get the latest version of DSWorld (2.03) from NGS's website: www.ngs.noaa.gov/PC_PROD/PARTNERS/index.shtml Now has a pull-down to plot EVERYTHING in a 1-mile radius of a given Lat/Lon. This will plot Destroy marks, published marks, reference marks, azimuth marks, calibration baseline marks, temporary bench marks, Tidal bench marks, etc. - anything in the NGS IDB. Works with GE 5.0.

Squares are vertical control points, triangles are horizontal control points. Blue are first order, red are second order, black are third order, and pink are the GPS control points that are part of the NAD83/2007 adjustment.

For those of you who use Google Earth, there is a program on NGS's website for plotting bench marks in Google Earth. The name of the program is DSWORLD. Check it out: http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/PC_PROD/pc_prod.shtml

50 new bench mark positions loaded for September.

959 new hand-held positions for marks were loaded into the NGS IDB on 8/26/08. Please use marchershee@gmail.com to email me new held positions in .gpx format. Thanks.