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Fun day
I needed to set up a repeater to get down into a ravine area and behind a ridge so I put it up on a windy nob looking over the line, the old fence line can be seen running along the lower ground and heading west through the ravine and up the hill before turning north. Basically it’s a sectional breakdown and a 1/16th line finally ending at a section line before turning north along the section line. Fun day, I was a bit hurried cause rain was predicted to get there early afternoon and it was right on time as I picked up and headed out at 1:30, it really dumped, it will be at least Monday before any access is available.
Cool thing was that I was able to get to almost the entire line with my four-wheeler except the really steep sections and the cut in the ravine.
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15 Replies
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I like your tripod!
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How does that stay up in wind?
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If it was a windy day, I would always set up my antenna tripod so it was leaning into the wind. Along with the one leg extended fully directly facing into it. My old boss admitted it was a good way to go, but always hating seeing it thinking someone might say “those surveyors can’t even set up a tripod straight”.
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Great view. The world is not just concrete and asphalt.
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It was very windy at times, and that antenna is sitting at a compression point so I wouldn’t be surprised if 30-40 mph hit it during the day. But no worries, that lathpod isn’t falling over unless a tornado plows through.
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Survey flagging has many practical applications and IMVHO is second to duct tape for a goto fixem upper.
I have sprayed contact cement and wrapped flagging in layers that would hold and seal things.
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A few years ago we had a long thread about the many uses for flagging. I think this is a notable addition. Also A. Harris’s use of contact cement to laminate flagging.
Recently I found an old pipe by a fence corner with bits of red woven fabric tied around it. It got me wondering when surveyors started using plastic flagging. When I started surveying in the late 60’s not much was made of plastic. But my memory of that time never was very good.
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Same here. We used torn strips of cloth from the bargain fabric store. The first plastic flagging I ever used was around ’70 or ’71, but I’m sure it was around before that.
In 1971 one of our field vehicles was an old station wagon with rear seats facing backwards. That’s where the “grunts” sat, including me. On the way back in one hot afternoon a co-worker and I were sitting back there staring out the rear window (rolled down for fresh air) when he picked up a whole roll of plastic flagging and told me, “watch this”. He hung onto one end and threw the roll out the window. 300′ of red flagging makes a really pretty swirl in the wash of a car. It quickly got too much to hold and broke.
The PC got all sorts of upset. He stopped, backed up and made us both get out and roll the flagging back onto the cardboard roll…which took some time to find. I tried to tell him I didn’t have a thing to do with it…but I was just as guilty as the guy that did it simply because, “I was back there..”
We used to hang the old cotton fabric strips around our necks with the ends tucked into your shirt. On hot sweaty days they made good dew-rags. It wasn’t too long ago (a year or so) I found an old flagging knot on a barbed wire fence. It broke when I pinched at it and I could see it was fabric. And although it looked white, the underneath side still had some pink (red?) dye on it. A fond reminder of how far we’ve come since using 19th. century brass transits with wooden stiff legged tripods.
Sometimes change IS for the better.
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You could probably pull a trailer with flagging if you wrapped enough layers. In this case however, I’m using some of my orange duct tape that I drape over my plastic marker posts. I have a container rigged up to put a roll on my belt, the most important little tool is a small stretchy rope I loop around the roll of tape to allow me to pull it up and out of the container.
I have to be sure and have a knife with me to cut the tape open when I take the antenna rod out of the lathpod. Otherwise you are either trying to unwrap the tape or trying to tear at it to open the lathpod. The setup is much sturdier than you may think. That antenna pole and antenna are very light, it doesn’t need much to hold it up.
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Previous (short) thread on history of flagging:
https://surveyorconnect.com/community/surveying-geomatics/history-of-flagging-material/
I asked the question back then because in checking for monuments around the church property I found a bit of plastic flagging on nails where I expected a rerod. My theory is that was added about the time of an early 1980’s addition to the building. In another location I also found plastic flagging on a 16d nail buried 4 inches, below the top of a rerod and touching it, and I don’t understand why anyone would do that.
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Just the other day I wrapped up my wounded finger with flagging.
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I found a 60d nail 18yrs after it had been set that had been picked to be a division corner on a family partition along the southwest railroad r/w just north of Kellyville, Texas.
It still had the knot of flag on it. White and Red
The top 3/8inch was fine as the knot preserved that part, the remainder of the nail had become encrusted as a rustball about 5in in diameter. We dug it out with a post hole digger and set 3ft of quickcrete around a 4ft cold steel rod.
My mentor had set it in 1956. I brought it back for show to prove we had actually found it. He was the one that taught me that just saying it was there was not absolute proof it was there. That was when I started using my Kodak 110 camera to document stuff.
I would imagine what you found was the result of a hand driving a rod over the top of the nail and the nail slipped to the side and did not follow the path of the bottom of the rod, seen it and done it before myself.
0.02
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Bill,
It is common practice to set a nail by a bent iron to have a definite point to setup on, the nail is set so that it represents where the iron (if straight) would be.
Ed
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I found 4 – 60d spikes set on the boundary in 1977 this week. They have a dimple on the head and some of the orange flagging is still there. They are useful to reestablish the original location of the pipe at the corner that is no longer there. I found 2 on each line going into the corner plus the pipes at the other end of the lines are still there.
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In my work area, we know the Surveyor by the color flagging he used. Very helpful in determining original monuments. My mentor started painting the top quarter of his pins 50 years ago. A practice we continue even though we cap our pins now.
After all these years, our pins are easy to identify because of this simple process.
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