I have several projects going that need good elevation control. Most of them can be done with OPUS and or OPUS DB but I like to use Benchmarks if they are avaliable.
I recovered a benchmark that we had used on a project about 15 years ago that we failed to do a recovery note on. I took pictures of it and did the online recovery form. I then discovered that you can do recoveries and submitt pictures with DS World. I got my pictures named correctly and uploaded them with DS World.
After I did all of that, I decided that I needed to put that BM in to my Google Earth to save a place marker for it so I could easly know it's name and PID when I have another project in that area. I plotted all of the BM's in the county and copied the place marker over to my list with intentions of deleting the rest of the county. On a lark, I opened one of the place markers and saw that I could look at a Geocache recover for the monument. The mark that I selected had not been recovered but I noticed that there was a link to nearby benchmarks and geocache. I opened up the link for benchmarks and got a list of benchmarks. The ones that had been recovered had a smiley face by them. I opened up the page for one of them and there were the geocache notes and pictures. I thne looked at the NGS website and discovered that there had not been a recovery filed on this BM for 25+ years.
I have learned to look in both databases. The ones that have been recovered by the geocache are usually in the parks and national forrest. Those are alos some of the areas where our Geoid Model needs help.
