So how about reaching out to our International Brothers on the Forum....Myself I would like to know more about surveying in say...New Zealand, South Africa, Israel and Germany. Do we have any representatives from these places? I know there some members here from New Zealand, England and Belgium but where else?
Pictures from the field... Stories from the field....how has Covid-19 changed your work?
I am particularity interested in seeing the survey vehicles and learning more about how the crews operate. One man, two-man, survey party?
Are boundary and construction/engineering surveys practiced under different licenses?
Do people always ask if it is a camera? What are you surveying for?
So on and so on...
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The closest I ever came to international surveying was doing work in Toronto..............Kansas, that is.
This should be a great learning experience.?ÿ Hope there are many replies.
@holy-cow I've surveyed in Paris......Kentucky
But seriously hope there are some good replies from the other side of the pond(s).
I always liked these posts and pictures from other surveyors around the world.
I moved to a 95% office job so I rarely make pictures anymore but will share some here.
City of Ghent along 'De Coupure' Waterway
Belgian Coast - job for connecting High Voltage lines to the UK
Surveying in Rusia (not me - picture from Michael Sacharov (RIP) TGO & RinexDates user)
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Absolutely great idea. Let??s see if we can start a weekly item under Today??s Office where these pictures belong. maybe something called ??last weeks whereabouts??
Just a thouht for @Wendell, would be nice if we could set somewhere a weekly reminder for ourselves. Time for your Whereabouts. At the end of the year we??ll have a lot of great pictures to make an nice desktop calendar background.
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christof.
I surveyed in Sydney, Australia for a few years after my studies. Most of my work was at Sydney Airport. I seldom did boundary/cadastral work.
For the last 11 years I have been surveying part-time in Bavaria, Germany. But in Germany I have never (not once!!!) used the German datum. Everything I do is local/assumed datum. I have never actually "interacted with Germany" as a surveyor. One of the older guys that I used to drink with (he was essentially the "Surveyor-General" of the city that I live in) told me that the state survey marks are all placed via GPS only, and to no better than 20mm northing and easting. Levels are not supplied at all by the state according to him. So, I basically never bothered tying in with such a terrible system and also never needed to because I don't do boundary work over here. Ever.
There was talk of Germany trying to tie in with the French network, which presumably would give the Germans a second/third MSL reference point, but I haven't been actively following that news.
The state of Bavaria does, however, have a topographical CAD plan of the entire state available for sale online. When I last checked it cost ?ª900K. That's a bit over $1 million of your green stuff in the USA at the moment.
NTRIP is readily available throughout Europe (and free for the most part) and has given me good results when I have needed it. I've really only used NTRIP to avoid the need of setting up a base-rover-radio system as opposed to the need to be on datum.
But I'm a total station guy. With that in mind, EDM baselines are hard to come by over here. My closest one is in Innsbruck, Austria, which is 200kms away. Booking them is pain in the butt, so I just don't do it. Believe it or not, I take an instrument home with me each year for Christmas (in my suitcase.........) and do it while I'm home in Sydney. I know of 3 in the Sydney metro area alone.
I bought a second-hand instrument over here once that came with a valid/current calibration certificate. It was in a folder and was probably around 50 pages long. The folder was nice though. I kept that.........
That's a bit over $1 million...
Holy Crap; that's a lot simoleons! for some dynamic data!
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So how about reaching out to our International Brothers on the Forum....Myself I would like to know more about surveying in say...New Zealand,
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Surveying in New Zealand today was grey.
Grey from top to bottom.
Grey cloud to ground level.
Grey, grey, grey and more grey.
I'd post you a photo, but it would just be a 60% Kodak test card.
I call it "Northumberland weather" - October to February was like this for me growing up.
But this is deep down South in the Roaring Forties, so we add...
Horizontal sleet to stop it being foggy.
Never got to more than a wet five above freezing.
And a wind of 35 gusting 50.
Yeah, its winter here.
But I've got Friday off to go skiing 🙂
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A NZ response, no pictures sorry.
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Cadastral (boundary) work is done using vector based survey plans (these days digital datasets) all recorded with government department (LINZ). The undisturbed monument (usually a wooden peg or post) in the ground is King, coordinates are just a useful tool to find monuments. We also place 0.5m long iron tubes or iron spikes or some mark in concrete block as witness marks with vectors connecting to new/old boundary momuments, these are for future surveyors benefit. Bearings and coordinates are on grid, areas and distances are ellipsoidal. All new work is on local circuit Transverse Mercator projections (nzgd2000) sound similar to what you US guys call LDPs as far as I can gather.
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Most topo work is also done on nzgd2000 coordinates and we have nzvd2016 which is a geoid model based on recent airborne gravimetric observations and is good to about 2cm absolute with relative accuracy being better.?ÿ We have an online GNSS processor called positionz-pp which sounds similar to OPUS; observe rinex, upload file and they email you coordinates.
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Unless an idiot engineer is involved and asks for NZTM coordinates (national Transverse Mercator projection) all engineering surveying for building construction is done with site control and a scale factor of 1!?ÿ Some civil construction is done with local Transverse Mercator projection as no-one is worried about a few cm in position.
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I'm sure laser scanning, lidar and drone work is pretty much the same as everywhere else in the world.
Here are a few from my travels...
Peru (in a 22 km tunnel being drilled for hydro)
And outside on a triangulation net station...
El Salvador...this was a suspension bridge that was destroyed by rebels, they cut the cables and dumped it in the river below..
And on the rim of smoking volcano (San Miguel) in El Salvador. The acid in the smoke from the volcano had dissolved the top of the monument. After a very strenuous hike, we later found out that was a reference mark and we had to hike up there again in the oppressive heat.
On the border between Honduras and El Salvador...the blue building is the customs house. Lawless area.?ÿ
India...this was a very large benchmark along the railroad
Sort of international...me turning angles with a T2 on station T 41 on St Thomas to set an eccentric for GPS. At the time this was the only second order control station on the island, nothing higher order.?ÿ
Ecuador...using Trimble RTX to stake to latitude 0?ø0'0.00" to set a disk
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Benchmark in Guyana
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