Revent

Yea, I don't care about Map Maker, never used it and don't want to. I was replying to this: It is simply not true. I have pointed out several examples and one specific. Picture taken in 2009 showing a 2014 copyright date. That is the not a random abnormality. You are not suggesting every image in the USA was taken this year are you? They all carry a 2014 copyright date. The copyright date is for the map set and has nothing to do with when a particular image was taken. TL;DR the whole thread. Like I said a while ago, the copyright date shown is when the tileset for that location was last updated (i.e. the last image at any zoom in the tileset). Large parts of the world (including the entire continental US, apparently) were re-imaged at 15m resolution by TerraMetrics in 2013, and have a 2014 copyright date. If you look at a place in Google Maps, see a 2014 copyright date, zoom out and see "Imagery Copyright 2014 TerraMetrics" around half scale, that's the copyright date you're seeing for the entire image stack for that location. At a particular zoom level you are not necessarily looking at the newest image. The current state (with newer images at wider zooms) is not 'normal' since the wider angles are updated less often, and as these are re-imaged at narrow zoom and updated the copyright dates will become 'generally' accurate again by attrition. Feel free to argue which how I originally (vaguely) phrased it, tho. If someone other than you wants to know the exact date of a particular image, Google Earth (free) and Google Map Maker (also free) give the exact info. Um, yeah. Charming. All off-topic anyhow.

The copyright date is for the map set and has nothing to do with the tiles or images at a particular location. As an example look at 41.655307, -108.101480 in both Google Earth (stand alone program) and in the new google maps. The images are the same as evidenced by the traffic on I-80. The image was taken 4 July 2009, the copyright date is 2014. That would be a noticeable replication lag! Also quick views of remote Nevada, Northern Canada and various places in the Pacific Ocean all carry the copyright date of 2014. GoogleBugs, again. The 'close in' imagery of that location was taken by DigitalGlobe on Jul 5, 2009. The 'wider-angle' photo was taken on Apr 10, 2013 by Terrametrics. The copyright date is, like you said, the date for the 'tileset' at that location....they probably didn't upload the 2013 photos till this year or something. Like I kinda 'implied' above, the info is visible in Map Maker.

Use something like surveyor's tape to mark out the edges of the area where it's 'visible' electronically, and it should be in the middle.

We've had really good success w/ fake ivy gorilla taped to an ammo box. I couldn't find a glue that would hold-up. Try J-B Weld. It might not actually stick to the ivy, but you can encase it.

https://www.google.com/mapmaker?ll=29.753187,-95.090275&spn=0.003965,0.005874&t=h&z=18&vpsrc=6&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=relatedproducts_maps&utm_source=mapseditbutton_normal (Google MapMaker account and login needed) This is the Battleship Texas. The photo was taken Feb 15, 2014. Unfortunately, it looks like it was a hazy day and you can't really see the pretty new paint job. :/ The copyright date is when the imagery was last updated for a location. That doesn't mean you're actually looking at the most recent photo (zoom, and notably, database replication lag).

Just as a note, the high-res google satellite images of most 'interesting' (by which I mean places like towns and well known areas like Alcatraz) places are updated at least yearly. If you look at the satellite image directly on maps.google.com there will be a copyright statement at the lower right that indicates what year the image was taken. It's also possible to request an updated photo of a location if you are user of Google Map Maker. What is interesting is that the satellite views displayed on the new Google maps and the Classic Google maps are different. There has been recent construction at a community college about 2 miles from me. The classic maps version shows the construction complete while the new maps version shows the land just after being graded. Note both maps display a copyright date of 2014 so that is obviously not a good indicator of the date the photo was taken. GoogleBugs. Different zoom levels, maybe?

Just as a note, the high-res google satellite images of most 'interesting' (by which I mean places like towns and well known areas like Alcatraz) places are updated at least yearly. If you look at the satellite image directly on maps.google.com there will be a copyright statement at the lower right that indicates what year the image was taken. It's also possible to request an updated photo of a location if you are user of Google Map Maker.

I have the "Descriptions and elevations of bench marks on the Missouri River" that describes the locations of the bench marks when they were placed. It's pretty funny to read the descriptions. They reference the stations, which is why I am really interested to get the PID of the station I found. For some fun, I'm gonna go out on the river bank tomorrow and, using the descriptions, see if I can locate any bench marks. http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3076864;view=1up;seq=571 This is the exact link to the station descriptions for the triangulation stations in Missouri. The area was surveyed in 1924 by the USGS. What is the 'modern' St. Charles 7.5x7.5 Quadrangle was published in two sections... North Bank: http://ims.er.usgs.gov/gda_services/download?item_id=5580220 South Bank: http://ims.er.usgs.gov/gda_services/download?item_id=5580220 Triangulation Station CHARBONNIER is visible in the upper right of the south bank image, near the map border. According to Google Maps, it's located on the hill directly above the St. Stanislaus Conservation Area in Hazelwood, and by my eyeball it should be around 1000 feet west of the transmission tower. When driving along Aubuchon Road after passing Teson (going east) you should be looking almost exactly in the right direction. According to the 1954 map, if you go to the location of the transmission tower (access from the end of Old Charbonnier Road), where the road turns just south of the tower there should be the remains of an old road leading off into the woods, and the station will be not far off the 'road' to the left. The station doesn't have a NGS datasheet, so I don't have exact coords, but 38.815N 90.391W should put you within a few hundred feet.

It might be a bit before I have the time to sit down and mess with it myself, but anyone else is welcome to move ahead with this if they want before I get to it. It's my idea, but it's not 'my' idea.

Also, occurred to me to mention that you will probably be unable to obtain 'location information' in the sense of latitude and longitude for the P.B.M.s (the leveling stations) in most cases, at least without later information (NGS or USGS data). The measurements simply weren't made. It should be possible, though, to 'figure out' their general location based on the given information in most cases, once you have found a member of the line. For this, I noticed while looking through these that the annual reports of the various division engineers usually discuss the field work in their district and give useful information that isn't in the index. There are tables and tables and tables...

Ok, heh. Report of the Chief of Engineers, 1894, Part 6, Appendix YY: Report of the Missouri River Commission, Appendix A7: - Index of surveys and physical data in annual reports Missouri River Commission from 1885 to 1893, both inclusive. http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3076898;view=1up;seq=84 The relevant page number are normally located in Part 4 or Part 6 of the volumes for a year. The catalog record for the series is located here... http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/010304360 (University of Cailfornia) http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008348722 (New York Public Library) http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008898705 (Princeton University) The relevant sections for Triangulation Stations are those on "Secondary Triangulation"... the primary triangulation was conducted using temporary station marks located along the river banks around 1880, and only tied in to the secondary at locations where, for example, the tree hadn't fallen down. For benchmarks you are looking at the sections on precise and ordinary levels, with the "P.B.M." mentioned in the titles being "Permanent Bench Marks", mainly the ones of the stone-pipe-cap variety. For these they also cared if the tree had grown. Enjoy! Just as a note, these are also available (if you can find them) on Google Books and the Internet Archive. Google Books metadata for books is based on OCR, and to be honest, sucks, and the Internet Archive is, well, a bit lacking in useful search functionality to be blunt, but those copies might occasionally be more legible on certain pages if they were scanned from a different copy of the book (duplicate book scans are extremely common).

Really? Cite? See my last ramble where I mentioned the enviromental damage from hikers cutting their own trails. Why would they bother to build hiking trails, say "You have to stay on established trails", and then let you walk off-trail without mentioning it. Actually, what I said was based on what it says now (and reading the relevant part of the enabling act). And don't say "But it wasn't that when they placed it", it's the responsibility of CO to maintain his cache. If you want to know what the rules used to be (this is from 2007, actually), it helps to read things people link. http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=173626&view=findpost&p=3083118 Supposedly the Arizona geocacher community is and had been quite aware of this issue. See comments from seven years ago about how if you ask on the local website you'll get scads of responses about the rules. See the comment above about how this has been rumored for over a year. See the comment above about an AZ cache owner who resolved this issue with his caches a year ago and was ridiculed for it. See my own comment about how it took me less than 20 minutes to find out, from well over a thousand miles away, that a specific cache was on commercially leased State Trust land. Most of that was spent finding the webpages, not actually checking (plus the fact I had to figure out the 'puzzle' of the location). The COs of 4000+ caches never bothered to check. How many of those caches complied with the 'general' rule that you have to mention in the description that you have landowner or manager permission, or the 'specific' rule that the description mention that the cache is on State Trust land and you need a permit? That some people complied with the rules is obvious. That others did not is.... also obvious. The community failed to police itself, so the State Trust banned geocaching. In Arizona, as in most places, it is a trivial matter to find out who owns a piece of property. You are obligated to do so in order to hide a cache. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/ http://www.geocaching.com/about/guidelines.aspx It's far from an Arizona-only thing. I submit for your perusal... http://coord.info/GC3R6PV This CO (and yes, he is still active, though not very) and the local reviewer (though I have no idea who that is) have not noticed this for several months now, and under Texas law anyone who seeks that cache after seeing that log (and thus knows it is private property not open to the public) could be prosecuted for criminal trespass, despite the area not being posted.

As I said, 'might' be needed. Contacting them first of course makes sense, but some agencies use their FOI office as the 'generic' contact point for public records inquiries. Others don't. Since all that is required to make an inquiry into a FOI request is to say 'this is an FOIA request' on your contact letter, the only real effect of calling it that is to prevent the agency from saying "we don't want to spend our time or resources finding that information". As far as it prolonging the time frame, by making a FOIA request you are placing the agency under a statutory obligation to respond within a specified period, usually a month. There have also been cases in the past of government agencies responding to FOI requests by simply putting the information online if it was already in a digital format. A guy came into my office the other day and stated he had an FOIA request for files for all the benchmarks around several dams that our agency placed. According to law I must supply those files in a timely manner. Fine, but there is a question of security concerning the dams and these benchmarks, so I will notify the Department of Homeland Security of this request. I will also redact any info in those file that I feel are of a sensitive nature. There may not be much info in the files he receives, but it will then be up to him to prove that the info is not of a sensitive nature and he can have fun trying to prove his case to a judge. The same would apply to someone seeking an FOIA request about our military bases. Why raise suspicions when a polite question about the availability of the info that is wanted will suffice in most cases. Do your FOIA and hope you don't get redacted files that lack the coordinates and descriptions of where exactly the benchmarks are located. I did ask politely for a chance to enter restricted areas inside Glen Canyon Dam and powerhouse and was given permission to locate and take photos (some photo directions were off-limits) and did log them on GC.com. We even ran a thread about that adventure. We had a personal guide and a security guard showing us where the marks were located. Go for your FOIA right out of the box and have fun finding all those marks. John Yeesh, this is getting silly. I just said "One case in which an FOIA might be needed...." not "These are directions for getting this information". Then I responded to a couple of 'misapprehensions' about FOIAs. If you read back, I actually agreed with you that asking first made sense. While, yes, that is a cool story, please don't be antagonistic about something I didn't even say. By the way, you totally misunderstand how FOIA works, in that your interpretation is that the responding official just gets to make s*** up about what to redact. A accurate reading would be "redact personally identifiable information and anything that is already explicitly classified under an existing Executive Order" and some other irrelevant exemptions. I would sincerely hope that the government is competent enough that you won't get sensitive information no matter how nicely you ask.

To jump waaay back to the OP, i.e. needing a permit to remove caches, one fairly obvious way that Arizona geocachers who DO have permits could contribute to a positive impression toward geocaching from the State Land department would be for geocachers who DO have permits to remove the archived caches that are verifiably on Trust land themselves, and document they are doing so, i.e. take non-posted photos of the cache location, remove the cache, contact the cache owner about returning the hide, and post a comment to the archived cache saying they are doing so. And, signifigantly, drop the Land Department an email saying "I removed this in compliance with your request, yada yada," and politely ask that they reconsider their decision. Oh, and make sure to mention how the bag of trash you hauled out. Don't say, "But geocaching should be fine because we are nice, but make a point." If you really care that much.

The roads and trails are not from geocaching. There were many roads made back when folks would go 4 wheeling out there, or mudbogging on those rare times when we had mud, or from the wildcat (illegal) dumping that used to go on a few decades ago. I didn't say they were, however, the language the SLD has about how 'one time use does not constitute a trail' pretty well implies that the user is expected to rely on a map or visible evidence of construction, and not contribute to the existence of a 'road or trail' that should never have existed. The obvious assumption would be that 'established' means 'built and maintained' not 'it's visible on the ground'. 'Trails' that exist because of damage don't disappear over time if people continue to use them. Part of the 'leave no trace' ethic is to not follow such paths. I've seen substantial amounts of damage in many national parks and forests due to people following a 'visible path' that is not part of the established trail to avoid something like a fallen tree, and causing erosion due to water following the new line. In desert areas this is even more of an issue, and having actually worked on volunteer trail maintenance crews in such areas I can personally say that the amount of effort required to fix them is ridiculous. Ever carried a landscaping timber a couple of miles in 100 degree heat to fix a washout? I have. The State Trust lands in Arizona are not public lands, and don't exist for recreational use. This is pretty clear from how they were established. Recreational use is just allowed under permit for the purpose of creating an additional revenue stream for the trust, and under terms that don't permit damage. Nitpicking by people about possible loopholes in the terms of their permit instead of abiding by the spirit of the system is unproductive behavior, and is simply going to cause them to become more resistant to geocaching. If you want geocaching to be allowed again, your best course of action would be to work with them to show that the geocaching community in Arizona actually cares about nature, and isn't just a bunch of people upset because part of their game was peed on. It wouldn't surprise me at all if at least some attention is being paid by them to the response to their action (such as this thread) and as an 'outsider' I can honestly say that the tone of some responses does not give a positive impression. There are undoubtedly caches that were incorrectly archived. The productive thing would be for those to be addressed individually, instead of just complaining. While it's entirely possible that the action to ban geocaching was taken due to conflating the effect of geocachers with that of other users, the way to resolve the issue would be to demonstrate that you are willing to abide by their decision and work productively to show that 'you' are not the people who were causing problems. The simple fact is that damage caused by even a few incorrectly placed caches would reflect badly on the hobby as a whole. Since their mandate is to preserve the lands in trust, they are ethically (and legally) required to take a conservative position. It's also entirely possible that the issue was created by complaints from people who DID purchase the "Special Use Permit" that allows for such things as the placement of temporary advertising signs about geocachers being allowed to leave objects on trust lands without paying the additional (rather large) fee.

The value is numeric, but you can chose from three different coordinate types (DMS, MinDec and DegDec) so the entered value is converted to the default type and trimmed, before it is stored in the database. If it was a text string, location based search could not work, and the web site would not answer with a 500 server error if you have a non-numeric character in these fields (Or two decimal points, happened a lot to me). My impression was probably just a result of how the website works, then. For transferring data from the NGS sheet I was using DMS entry to avoid having to do separate calculations.

This may be the case for some of the caches that were archived, but not for all of them. There was an agreement made between the state land dept. and geocachers. It was made in the early days of geocaching. As time progresses, people come and go and policies change. So what used to be isn't what is now, but stating that none had permission is just not true. Sorry if I my 'generic' statement was incorrect in some cases, as I've mentioned previously I'm not local. I just hopped into this because the knee-jerk and accusatory responses bugged me. I will say that when the issue at hand was on the order of 4000+ caches, taking the action of archiving them all (which can always be undone by a later review) was quite appropriate. I would suspect that geocaching was allowed when it was a matter of a few caches that were placed under the terms of such an agreement, but it's now become an issue due to people not following the agreement or the terms of their use permits. The permit terms specify things such as "you are not allowed to leave established trails or roads", and I seriously doubt all 4000+ caches were placed within arms reach of an established trail. Instead of criticizing Groundspeak or the State Land Department, it would be far more productive to take issue with the people who actually screwed it up for you.

As I noted in my previous post after a bit of research, Marriott does not OWN the property in question, it is State Trust Land held by Marriott under a 99 year commercial lease. I seriously doubt that the county land assessor is failing to charge the land portion of property taxes on a valuable resort if Marriott actually owns it (though the records do seem to indicate that Marriott is paying taxes on the improvements). That particular cache could probably easily be reactivated by the cache owner after verification from the managers of the resort that the cache is allowed. You'll note, if you look, that the entry doesn't say that permission was obtained, and the obvious assumption would be that the leaseholder would have the right to allow such nondestructive usage. To say that the State Trust land is 'owned by the state' and 'supposed to be sold' is, from everything I read, rather inaccurate, but a bit beside the point.

I think reviewers all know that maps are not perfectly accurate. But when told to archive all the caches on trust land, maps are most probably the only thing the reviewer could use. Going to visit the location of each cache to see if it's ok is sadly not feasible. Have you tried sending your reviewer a polite email with some pictures clearly showing where your cache is and where the fence around the trust land is? I think it would be worth a try... Given the description 'a few feet', it's also quite possible that while your GC was not on trust land, the coordinates were...

As a non-Arizona resident, it took me about 20 minutes of research and a bit of reading to conclude that the state agency is correct, in that the land in question (I'm talking about trust land in general, not that specific cache) is NOT state property, but simply held in trust by the state. They are legally required to only allow usage that provides an economic benefit to the trust, and the enabling act makes it pretty clear that by arbitrarily allowing other usage the officials would be opening themselves up to prosecution. The people who placed geocaches there were both in violation of the rules of geocaching by not having land manager permission, but also the terms of their use permit (if they had one). To be perfectly honest, the state could be FAR more aggressive than simply requesting that the caches be archived, by pursuing legal measures. As far as the specific cache, if you actually LOOK at the parcel map, you'll see that the area in question is shown as State Trust land that is under commercial lease. The Maricopa County Assessor's Office also shows both parcels located at 5350 Marriott Drive, Phoenix AZ as being held by the Arizona State Land Department. While I'm not saying that Marriott doesn't have the right to allow a geocache on property that they hold under lease (I'm pretty certain they do) it's usually better to rely on authoritative sources before you go off the handle about something, instead of relying on the results of a phone conversation with a middle manager about something that's probably well outside of their sphere of responsibility.

As I said, 'might' be needed. Contacting them first of course makes sense, but some agencies use their FOI office as the 'generic' contact point for public records inquiries. Others don't. Since all that is required to make an inquiry into a FOI request is to say 'this is an FOIA request' on your contact letter, the only real effect of calling it that is to prevent the agency from saying "we don't want to spend our time or resources finding that information". As far as it prolonging the time frame, by making a FOIA request you are placing the agency under a statutory obligation to respond within a specified period, usually a month. There have also been cases in the past of government agencies responding to FOI requests by simply putting the information online if it was already in a digital format.

In my best Smithers voice, exxxcellent. These are, as a matter of fact, available online. Expect another post soonish with linkies.

Almost true. The Etrex gives you access to the GLONASS constellation. I've noticed increased performance under difficult tree cover with the additional constellation. The addition of GLONASS provides significantly better performance under any kind of 'difficult conditions', not just tree cover. This article illustrates quite well (and graphically) the kind of improvement in accuracy that the additional constellation provides under urban conditions, though the tests were not made with a consumer GPS. http://electronicdesign.com/test-amp-measurement/real-world-drive-tests-declare-verdict-gpsglonass The most relevant comparison to a handheld would be test #2, with a passive antenna. If you search the web, there are quite a few other comparisons with consumer GPSes that show similar results, though without the nifty illustration.

Which, somewhat ironically, would have a negative impact on the likelihood of other agencies allowing geocaching....

Exeter is broken somewhere behind the scenes, not browser dependent problem. I saved it with generic data that would work under normal situations and it still generated same error. I then restored the original except leaving coordinates at 3 digits. From what I've gathered in the process of providing more precise coordinates for some benchmarks, the database stores the coordinates as a text string rather than a numerical value. Trying to enter a coordinate in DMS format with more than five characters in the 'seconds' field will not work, which leads to the interesting result that locations within 10 arcseconds to the West or North (in my hemisphere) of a 'minute line' can be more precise than those farther away. Meh.