I live in the boonies of North Carolina and I'm just finishing my first completed survey, which took over a year because:
*it's big, woody, and hilly
*I spent all my work experience, before getting my license, drawing, so no field experience
*helpers kept leaving, didn't answer calls, etc. I had six helpers over the course of the job.
*a few times I hurt my leg and couldn't walk for a week or more.
Hopefully I can get some more work that isn't so tough. 🙂
I picked my username because I seem to be the surveyor who knows most about spirals in North Carolina. I program computers and I've written code to compute points on a spiral, spiral intersections, etc. Since the spiral is not expressible in closed form (like the normal distribution function, and for the same reason), this all has to be done numerically. None of the jobs I've drawn have involved spirals though.
NCSpiralGuy, post: 401827, member: 12287 wrote: I live in the boonies of North Carolina and I'm just finishing my first completed survey, which took over a year because:
*it's big, woody, and hilly
*I spent all my work experience, before getting my license, drawing, so no field experience
*helpers kept leaving, didn't answer calls, etc. I had six helpers over the course of the job.
*a few times I hurt my leg and couldn't walk for a week or more.
Hopefully I can get some more work that isn't so tough. 🙂I picked my username because I seem to be the surveyor who knows most about spirals in North Carolina. I program computers and I've written code to compute points on a spiral, spiral intersections, etc. Since the spiral is not expressible in closed form (like the normal distribution function, and for the same reason), this all has to be done numerically. None of the jobs I've drawn have involved spirals though.
Welcome from another NC surveyor, I still remember the feeling of completing that first survey, although for me it has been over 50 years. I was working up in Cherokee a few months ago and was looking for the end of a buried culvert and slipped down the road embankment and hurt my knee and was lame for a while, it is no fun walking up and down the mountains with a hurt knee, one of the joys of working solo I guess.
Ed
Welcome!
Welcome to the bar.
You sound like you will fit in with this bunch.
Many of us are not quite concentric. A few are oblong. But all of us are fussing with an oblate spheroid....
I hope you will stick around, cast out your pole, and make us all richer.
I know I try to make others richer, by my posts.
And, many have contributed to me, in many forms. Advice, warnings, encourgements, and downright berated me.
I'm better for it.
Welcome to the forum.
Nate
Ps, keep the salt handy.
Always glad to know that our numbers are growing. We all learn something new nearly every day here. Welcome.
Greetings from Charlotte!
Welcome. I have to ask, just how big was that survey? I can't imagine working on only 1 survey for the entire year.
I'm more of a urban type surveyor. I generally do 200-250 surveys per year.
Howdy and welcome,
:clink:
Hello and welcome also, I was surprised to see you can be become licensed in your state without any field experience, never heard of that before but to each state its own.
Welcome NCSpiralGuy
Welcome, I'm new to this site as well but have already found a lot of very useful information and interesting discussion.
Welcome from the Rocky Mount area. What part are you in, as there are boonies in all parts!
Welcome from Wilmington, NC. I am surprised you can even sit for an exam much less get licensed without any field experience. I am positive it was not possible in 1994.
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It's 41776 må?, or about 10.3 acres. If it were a flat meadow that big, it wouldn't have taken nearly that long. Climbing up and down the hills for four hours carrying the prism pole and the metal detector wore me out, and I could barely walk on the level floor the next day. Sometimes I had no help for several weeks. One guy got pretty good at setting up the tripod and leveling the gun with the legs, and then he disappeared.
The form asked for progressive work experience. I started out doing rectangular drawlots and learned over the years to draw physicals, compute points to be set, scale floodlines, figure out gaps and overlaps, and draw a few plats to be plotted on big paper and recorded.
I'm in northwest Rutherford County. I used to live and draw in Charlotte. JB, could we have met?
FrancisH...?
I don't think so, Rutherford county is the adjoining county to my West. Who the heck would chose Rutherford county as there "home" ifn they were posing?
Adam, post: 402100, member: 8900 wrote: I don't think so, Rutherford county is the adjoining county to my West. Who the heck would chose Rutherford county as there "home" ifn they were posing?
Lol. Welcome to the forum.
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cwlawley, if you're in Charlotte, I'm the guy with the board and some angle irons in the back of the pickup.
Here's one thing I ran into on this survey with no experience: I laid out the traverse so that I could do a seven-leg traverse to check accuracy before I started wandering all over the woods with the gun and pole. I found a discrepancy of a decimeter in that short traverse, which was obviously too much. I tried to think of what could cause the error. To check whether it's the gun or the pole, I put the pole on a hub in the front yard, set up the gun on some random point, and shot it. Then I turned the pole 90å¡ and shot it again. I took four shots and wrote a spreadsheet. The error was clearly in the pole. The next time I went to Charlotte, I brought the pole (and I think also the gun) to T&L for adjustment. Finding out that it was being jolted out of kilter by rolling around in the back of the pickup, I discussed with the guy at T&L and some surveyors in Rutherford County what they hold their tools in and what they cover their truck beds with. I decided on a cheap method: I bought a board, cut it to fit in the bed, put angle irons, and hold down the pole and the tripod with mini bungee cords stretched between the angle irons.
NCSpiralGuy, post: 402392, member: 12287 wrote: cwlawley, if you're in Charlotte, I'm the guy with the board and some angle irons in the back of the pickup.
Here's one thing I ran into on this survey with no experience: I laid out the traverse so that I could do a seven-leg traverse to check accuracy before I started wandering all over the woods with the gun and pole. I found a discrepancy of a decimeter in that short traverse, which was obviously too much. I tried to think of what could cause the error. To check whether it's the gun or the pole, I put the pole on a hub in the front yard, set up the gun on some random point, and shot it. Then I turned the pole 90å¡ and shot it again. I took four shots and wrote a spreadsheet. The error was clearly in the pole. The next time I went to Charlotte, I brought the pole (and I think also the gun) to T&L for adjustment. Finding out that it was being jolted out of kilter by rolling around in the back of the pickup, I discussed with the guy at T&L and some surveyors in Rutherford County what they hold their tools in and what they cover their truck beds with. I decided on a cheap method: I bought a board, cut it to fit in the bed, put angle irons, and hold down the pole and the tripod with mini bungee cords stretched between the angle irons.
Hopefully with the gun in it's box or a padded instrument bag seatbelted in the truck beside you.
