Hey guys - I have been browsing on the site for a while, but just now posting. Found some cool old equipment I wanted to share here.
Estate sale finds: Wild Heerbrugg NK10, N3 levels and T2002 and an assortment of various Wild tribrachs, Prisms pole and tripod and nick nacks.
I am fairly certain the internal battery is shot on the T2002. What should I consider when trying to revive this? I have found the same battery I can order, and I’m confident in being able to physically change the battery, but how would one go about getting the settings all back to the way they should?
I know next to nothing of this era of equipment.
On the levels: I got the NK10 in *okay* order – someone had played with the split mirror alignment (there was new machine screws on the access panel and the screw heads of the mirror assembly were boogered a little) – I toyed with it and got both bubbles and mirror assembly back to “zero” on the bench where I should be able to set it back true based on the manuals recommended process. Its missing the focus eyepiece for the horizontal angle reading.
The N3 seemed to be untampered with and cared for well. Case definitely shows wear, but actual level looks nice.
As far as the intro - My wife and I live in Tennessee, and got licensed back in '21 and I am 32 years old now.
When I was a kid and mom made a pie. My dad would say son this is no good. So he would send me away so he had more for himself. So I will try. Just send the stuff to me and I will take the headache off your hands lol. Just kidding. Nice find. That was one of my favorite instruments for sure. For its day it was extremely hard to beat a well seasoned I man and a couple good rod men on Topo with one of those. Easily get 900 shots a day and never miss a beat. Field to finish with wild soft. Then off to cad for cleanup and fine tuning. I can still remember the sound of the top mount edm. Eye buried in the scope spin from one person to the next. And watch those folks hop. Good good in two different tones each person knew who had been shot and was running to the next point. It was like a well rehearsed play. Everyone knew their place and such. So many fond memories.
Give me a start line Code 70 run break line type 2 etc. man. What Fun. Hope you get her working and have fun. Know the guy who was one of the people who wrote wild soft.
Cool stories! Yeah I like getting to mess with this old stuff and learn how it all works.
You found a good set up for sure. One of the things I liked about that set up was. If you really knew the gun. You could shoot a distance to the prism and turn it to the angle for the offset before it recorded. Now it was a small window but the distance would be collected first then the angle. So you had to be careful and not turn to the next rod to quickly. But it eliminated in most cases having to enter into the offset routine. And some practice. Make sure when you get her working to align the edm correctly. The site of crosshairs should be aimed at the bottom of the prism they had for those not the center of glass. The edm would be set up to shoot center of prism. So they are parallel. The top mount edm. Also a routine in the gun itself which was awesome for collecting sidelines and set backs back in the day for small lot surveys. You could locate any two points and it would tell you a delta angle to turn to and that would set you parallel to that line plus it would give you that distance offset of that line. Example could not set on a front lot corner and see down to the back because of the ladies landscape. We’ll get out anywhere between them like a resection kinda and shoot both corners. Turn the angle and then the crew would pull a steel tape from house corner and rock it like a level rod parallel to gravity. You read the lowest reading add or subtract the offset distance show on sketch bam you just got the sideline . Of course we ran three man crews back then . Oh did we have fun though. I would use that routine as well as an extra check when running a line out and hit a tree do the house topping to get around and back on line. Then set up on the other side and use that to check the line. Good times for sure.
That is a nifty routine it allowed on the line offset. This did come with the prism dedicated for it with the target below the glass. I have two batteries ordered. I could not find any in the US but found some in the netherlands that i could ship to a distributer that would ship to me. So hopefully within the next month I get the battery and get it up and going again. I read I will have to reset some internal constants the battery kept alive.
