Time To Reload The Ngs Database?

[+chaosmanor]

I realize that this might be a tremendous undertaking - or not I really don't know, but I can imagine - but the current Official Histories are getting kinda old. It's been something like 2 years since they were downloaded, and there are a lot of new Histories, many of them by geocachers; including myself I am just wondering if there is a way to get the current datasheets from the NGS and download them here, while keeping our logs intact. My main reason for asking is that I am going on a long trip up north. I was looking at the BM listings at some of the places that I am visiting, and I needed to check the datasheet on one BM. It turned out that it was visited in May, 2002, even though the NGS had been unable to find it in 1988! I, thus, realized that the GC.com info has started to get a bit "old". Is there any chance of newer NGS data in the near future?

[+CacheBar]

Hi,

Hope this post isn't too late. But the NGS website has a feature which allows you to find any station in the US with several ways of searching, by PID, station name, county, USGS Quad, etc.

It is contantly updated, so it should be very up to date.

You can start your search on this page:

 

http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/datasheet.prl

[ArtMan]

I say "amen" to chaosmanor's request. But I imagine the task is not trivial, and how long have we been waiting for a Benchmark tab on the front page?

 

This is one reason why, when I go in the field, I take the printout from the NGS datasheet. I have downloaded on my hard drive the archive files for the counties I most frequently visit, and I try to keep them up to date (though the updater tool is not the most user-friendly one around: you have to do each county file separately, and they are not cumulative, so you have check for possible update files for each month since the main archive file was created).

 

I actually use the NGS site more than the geocaching.com site, mainly because of their mapping feture. There's a rather steep learning curve, and it can be very slow on a dial-up connection, but I've found the effort worthwhile. It's especially valuable for identifying true bench marks (those pesky 'scaled' ones placed for elevation purposes. They are often strung out along a road at half-mile (or so) intervals, at least in my part of the country. Very easy to understand when presented graphically on a map.

[RACooper]

I've added a reference to this thread to the Bugs/Suggestions/Requests thread pinned at the top of this forum.

[+Black Dog Trackers]

That thread has a note from Jeremy (Oct. 10, 2003) saying they've been working on some code to import the benchmark files.

 

Hopefully when they do they will get rid of the skull distinction that turned out to be more of a problem than a benefit.