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Most Obvious Finds


holograph

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A comment in a different thread made me think about some of the unusual marks I found. OK, there haven't been any really unusual ones I've found, but this one made me wonder what wrong turn the USGS crew took in 1954 to have missed this one:

 

Anyone else have old "mark not found" recoveries that were out in plain sight when you found them?

 

0df69dd1-5640-471d-8d9c-6d8d98483724.jpg

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NJ0498 was in plain sight, although the description indicated a measurement from the wrong end of the concrete. I'll steal my brother's photo:

31b0762a-d997-40c6-bcf0-93f4575c3695.jpg

 

MG0512 '5 Bolt' is listed by NGS as destroyed (therefore not in GC data), then Found Poor by USPSQD, and I found it in plain sight looking exactly like the description, and solid.

 

NJ0580[ was missed by USGS and USPSQD and all I had to do was sweep the dirt off it.

Edited by Bill93
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One fella on my crew had worked several years for USGS back in the 70's in Michigan. When this topic came up once, He said they often noted marks as not found on their notes to mean, they did not look for them. They just were not needed. They did think that information would go beyond the field crew but it could have ended up being reported to NGS as NOT FOUND when in reality, they just did not look for it.

 

Ignore not founds by the US Power Sqd, some of them do not spend a lot of effort in looking for them. They are often not from the area (tourist) they are in and have no idea the roads may have changed etc. 95% of not found by them around me are there, how they missed them is puzzling because it would seem one would have to be blind to miss it.

Edited by elcamino
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Ignore not founds by the US Power Sqd, some of them do not spend a lot of effort in looking for them.  They are often not from the area (tourist) they are in and have no idea the roads may have changed etc.  95% of not found by them around me are there, how they missed them is puzzling because it would seem one would have to be blind to miss it.

That makes sense as the original notation on U 30 was that it was set into the wall of city hall. City hall is actually several blocks from this location (that's not to say that this building wasn't used as city hall at one point). I can see how it might have led to some confusion if they were actually looking for this benchmark on city hall. :D

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I had an interesting find with OC0589, marked as NOT FOUND in 2001 by NGS. It was not far off my path or I may not have tried.

 

Instructions said go to the top of the rise to pole #15. I found the top and found pole 16. I went south and found pole 17. OK....go the other way.

 

Hmmmm....there is pole 15 and it has orange tape around it.

 

OK...now take a bearing in this direction for so many yards........HEY!!!!! Is that orange tape over there in the woods?

 

Haha......here is the NOT FOUND mark. But some surveyor found it before me !!!!!!

 

http://www.geocaching.com/mark/details.aspx?PID=OC0589

Edited by Spoo
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I recovered EZ-3353 near Sanford NC. In 1980, NCGS couldn't find it, and lamented the loss of the reference trees. The USPSQD didn't find it in 2004.

 

I had a slight advantage: I brought along a good GPS receiver, and I had tranferred the coordinates onto a topo map and an aerial photograph. Therefore, I was not hampered by the destruction of the references. Having an assistant (the sharp-eyed Lockjaw, who is a local resident) gave me an extra set of eyes.

 

It definitely is worth going after the "not founds", as many in this Forum can attest.

 

-Paul-

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I've found 12-15 marks previously reported as not found by the Power Squadron. Most of these were rods-in-logo-caps that were 2-6 inches below the surface. Apparently, Power Squadron does not dig.

 

Power Squadron has gotten more than its fair share of abuse in these fora, but my observation is that they do a pretty good job with tidal stations, range lights and all sorts of other things that are water- and boating-related.

 

In light of our recent discussions about Geocacs logging RMs as stations and my observation of Geocacs "finding" long-gone intersection stations, I'll refrain from bad-mouthing the Squadron. I don't think there is any more glory in finding a USPSQN "not found" than in finding a mark that a casual Geocacher couldn't find.

 

[Disclosure: I'm not in the Power Squadron nor do I know anyone who is.]

 

NGS not-founds are another story. Kudos to anyone (like Spoo, for example) who can find one or two of those.

 

Will

Edited by seventhings
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We have a few that we will share with you.

 

The first is a mark that had been declared MIA by the NGS since 1954. We recovered it 50 years later - & as you can see in the picture, it is right next to the highway. And, the 'go to' description was accurate. Note the storm moving in from the left side of the picture.

 

7dda89d9-8848-49a2-873a-e480f7a7e6ff.jpg

 

GP0265 - E 51

 

Then there is FS0619 - X 109 that has an interesting note in the '49 recovery by the NGS. Found in Good Condition in '49 - but, by the note - may have been destroyed. Then a Not Found by the NGS in '57. We found it in 2004.

 

Now we have GR0762 - I1

that was not found by the NGS in '82 & we recovered it in 2004. The interesting thing on this one- the # of other PIDs within 1/10 of a mile...we did not have time to look for most of those...we have to return.

 

Not to leave out the USGS...here are a couple of their marks that they could not find.

GP0225 - 3938.63

Not found by USGS in '78 & we recovered it in 2004. We had a lot of fun on this one.

 

& finally GP0131 - N 6 that even with the witness post - they missed it...out in plain sight. Not found '87 & we recovered it in 2004 with this good picture to go with it.

48997fcc-fa12-4f2c-8d8b-7eb61adb933a.jpg

 

So, some of those that say 'not found'--go verify - they may just be waiting for you to come along.

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Let me chime in here for a sec.

 

I believe it is important to remember NOT to trash any agency or group about errors regarding recoveries on this thread. Remember, we are all human and everyone makes mistakes.

 

Personally, I enjoy finding marks which haven't been logged for a long time. Here are three which haven't been noted for almost 75 years, and are just outside our Nation's Capital.

 

HV1752

HV1755

HV1762

 

- Mitch -

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We originally found this mark during a picnic. Passing through the area on vacation, we decided to stop and look for it again so we could log it. Took some pictures and came home to look it up and were surprised to find it was a "Not Found". But to be fair, the co-ordinates put it on the wrong side of the highway and as the "Not Found" entry says, the whole island is more or less an "Outcropping of rock". We just found it by accident and dumb luck.

 

AB3903

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One fella on my crew had worked several years for USGS back in the 70's in Michigan. When this topic came up once, He said they often noted marks as not found on their notes to mean, they did not look for them. They just were not needed. They did think that information would go beyond the field crew but it could have ended up being reported to NGS as NOT FOUND when in reality, they just did not look for it.

 

Ignore not founds by the US Power Sqd, some of them do not spend a lot of effort in looking for them. They are often not from the area (tourist) they are in and have no idea the roads may have changed etc. 95% of not found by them around me are there, how they missed them is puzzling because it would seem one would have to be blind to miss it.

 

Another question...I have seen negative references in various places to the U.S. Power Squadron. Who are they, and why do they recover (or not, as the case may be) benchmarks?

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U.S Power Squadron is a club for boaters. As one of their activities, they check on the status of navigation aids, including benchmarks. Members get some kind of merit points for their reports, so there appears to be an incentive to go after quantity rather than quality. Besides, they are naturally more interested in boats, not benchmarks.

 

We tend to see a significant number of cases where a NOT FOUND report by USPSQ is followed by a FOUND by some other agency or geocacher.

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U.S Power Squadron is a club for boaters. As one of their activities, they check on the status of navigation aids, including benchmarks. Members get some kind of merit points for their reports, so there appears to be an incentive to go after quantity rather than quality. Besides, they are naturally more interested in boats, not benchmarks.

 

We tend to see a significant number of cases where a NOT FOUND report by USPSQ is followed by a FOUND by some other agency or geocacher.

 

Thanks for the info...I had always wondered about it. This explains a lot.

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Here is the intro page for their BM recovery work:

 

http://www.usps.org/national/coch/CoChPage36.htm

 

It is apparently part of a larger "Cooperative Charting Program" between them and NOAA/NOS/NGS/etc...

 

And, incidentally, I haven't found their work to be particularly shoddy in my area. But I do agree on the subject of quality vs. quantity, it seems like attaching rewards, contests, etc. to BM recovery is a double-edged sword...

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Not only "Not Founds" that were obvious, but also "Destroyed Discs" that were obvious.

See previous thread. These discs have now been "un-destroyed" by NGS. They were both very obvious and exactly where described. Neither are in GC.com, since they were "destroyed" at the time the GC.com database was "pulled" from NGS. You can't tell who reported them as destroyed. Just as well, I suppose. All part of our "hobby" of helping NGS cleanup their database.

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We found several BMs in our area that are "blazenly obvious", but have not been recovered or worse, incorrectly recovered. I don't want to slew through the list of finds to link them though (truly lazy indeed).

 

BTW, The power squadron will be out in our area this weekend recovering BMs. I gave our cell number to a friend (he's a member of the Power Squadron) in case they needed our help in recovering any they can't find. :ph34r:

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