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Your longest shot with a total station
shelby-h-griggs-pls replied 3 years ago 25 Members · 36 Replies
Mine has been about 1 mile. We called it ??power surveying?. Typically we occupied section corners and used a triple prism and a Leica Wild T2002 and this was in Kansas from hilltop to hilltop (yes there are hills in Kansas).
T. Nelson – SAM, LLCMine was a tad over a mile using a Topcon total station in 1988 during a large (2,400 acres) boundary survey near Indiantown, FL. Most of the distance was through the woods, but the prism was situated outside the woods. Afterwards, I wondered about the temperature differential from my occupied point in the woods to the prism. I had recently read about taking a temperature reading at the instrument and one at the prism when shooting a long distance through varying temperature zones.
MH- Posted by: @john-nolton
@mike-marks You are the champ for 10 mile shots. I don’t think so. In 1973 in Montana we did a lot
of 20 mile shots with the MRA3 Tellurometer; and I do not call myself anything for that.
Come to think of it, the Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) experiment is probably the champ, about 239,000 miles.
I guess I was cheating a little bit. It wasn’t a total station, just an EDM. I don’t remember what it was. It was my first introduction to surveying, and just an incendental duty to temporary “physical scientest” position. It was dark grey and the size and shape of a suitcase. I think it had a German name (not Leica). The readout was actually physical numbers that spun around.
With an actual total station, shots of about a mile were not unusual, we used early Topcon GTS series guns.
In about 1979 on my first job as a party chief, we shot something a little over 13,000 feet in the cool of the morning in the mountains with an HP3810. I think we used 9 glass and built a big site out of lath and painted it brightly. Shot east to west, so the sun lit up the site very well. I recall doing it in feet and meters several times.
Many years later I went to work for a state agency. In every prism bag was a “pinky.”. It was about a yard of bright pink cloth that was draped around the tripod below the prism. It made seeing the backsite so much easier. I had to go into a fabric shop once to buy some more material. Felt a little odd telling the salesperson “I need the brightest pink material you have in this place.”
Single prism, common total station, shot of a little over 5000′ one time. From a logging road landing across a valley to a logging cut. 1993. Leica 1010.
I was just curious. BLM was using alot of high tech stuff in Alaska back then. Inertial systems, etc. The HP 3800 was about the longest range EDM back then available to the average Surveying firm. There was some stuff that used radio waves instead of light beams.
What a strange iteration of “mine’s longer”…
-All thoughts my own, except my typos and when I am wrong.I am not sure what we were using was a “survey” instrument. This was work for a government agency in coordination with a University.
In 2008 I had the pleasure of performing Tri-Lateration Deformation surveys on all the lake and river dams in the USACE St. Louis District. It was the last year that we had to use the Kern Mekometer. What a moody beast that thing was! There’s a Control Monument that’s 19400′ north of the dam at Rend Lake. Conditions had to be perfect for that machine to get it. Always early morning before the heat waves started and hopefully there wasn’t any fog or haze. We implemented a Trimble S8 DR HP 0.5″ the following year. It didn’t even break a sweat to a single prism. Flip on the long range and fire away. I’d just have my guy park the white truck right behind it so I could see it.
Longest and biggest is where mistakes and errors and disasters live.
Being just right or Perfect is the goal.
???? ???? ????
@jflamm Which Kern Mekometer did you use? The ME3000 or the ME5000.
I can’t seeing the ME5000 (Laser) having any trouble with that shot (19,400 feet ~ 5913 Meters).
Please explain because I am interested in knowing more.
Thank You, JOHN NOLTON
@john-nolton The ME5000. It was hooked up to a car battery and controlled by a laptop running an archaic USACE program. There was always a multitude of problems whether it was a moody cable or the program freezing up and you had to reboot. I’m sure when this thing was new and fresh, it probably operated a whole lot better. As you know, there aren’t any optics. You would just aim until you got that really bright return from prism and then dial it in until the needle was in the green. Hit measure on the laptop and listen to it clunk away. I can’t recall how many measurements we had it set to do, I think 10. Sometimes it went quick, sometimes it took 5,10,15 minutes depending on the length and atmospheric conditions. I wish I would have gotten pictures of it back then but I didn’t have a camera phone yet.
Around 27000 feet with a Wild T2000 with scope mounted DI5L. That was considered a modular TS back in the early 1990’s when I did the shot.
Out in Wyoming in the 1982-83 time frame, I think we went longer than that with K&E laser Rangers, but those were a tripod mounted EDM with visible red laser, not a TS.
SHG
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