One of the things on my list to learn has been layout/stakeout.
I'm a hand's on kind of guy, so I decided to enhance my skills as follows:
I've been trying to grow a bluegrass lawn, ever since Tropical Storm Irene sent most of my back yard down stream a couple of miles. I've had one heck of a problem with Poa...a type of annual Bluegrass that's no good. So in an effort to get rid of it, I dug a lot of it up and replanted the spots. The problem is, I'm not sure the discolored splotches on the lawn are the replaced grass or the Poa re-emerging. If the latter, I need to use a spot-pre-emergent next spring, soon after the snow melts around here.
So the problem is: How to mark the spots? And then stake them out again in the spring. I could have left the unsightly pink flags in the lawn; they'd be fine there, by me, but my wife...well not so much.:-/
So, I set up a Occupied Sight location; called it OC1, and set it to NEZ= 0,0,0.
Then drove a nail into the sill of my shed, and set a prism up on it and called it BS1, and measured the coordinates using NEZ measuring.
Then sequentially measured (in NEZ) the 15 or so locations, by just plopping the prism on a tribrach down on the lawn. I wrote them down old school style, but I'm confident they're in the TS as well, and will keep them in the instrument until next spring.
Next spring, I'll try to reverse the process using the Layout function in the Topcon TS.
> The problem is, I'm not sure the discolored splotches on the lawn are the replaced grass or the Poa re-emerging.
I think you left out one important alternate possibility....
> > The problem is, I'm not sure the discolored splotches on the lawn are the replaced grass or the Poa re-emerging.
>
> I think you left out one important alternate possibility....
Nope. Wife's dog got hit by a truck 3 years ago. :-O Solved that problem!
You need a data collector to go with the TS even if it's just a HP48GX with a COGO card. That and some basic cogo/drafting software that will allow you to move data back and forth between the two. Then you could do a basic as-built/topo of your property and be able to go back and see what changes over time. You're approaching this whole surveying business with one arm tied behind your back. Grasshopper must master art of walking before attempting marathon.
Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get me.
> You need a data collector to go with the TS even if it's just a HP48GX with a COGO card. That and some basic cogo/drafting software that will allow you to move data back and forth between the two. Then you could do a basic as-built/topo of your property and be able to go back and see what changes over time. You're approaching this whole surveying business with one arm tied behind your back. Grasshopper must master art of walking before attempting marathon.
I know, I know! Been lookin'; been saving! Got budgets. I'm starting to believe, however that the slow pace of being able to acquire ALL the tools I need at once to "do it all", has opened up the opportunity to spend more time than I would otherwise, methodically learning each aspect of the art.
It truly is becoming apparent, though, that a data collector really is an almost indispensable part of the process.
Thanks for your support!
That total station keypad looks identical to mine. What total station is that?
I agree you need a data collector. You could probably pick up a used Ranger 200T or a Recon pretty reasonable.
I had toyed around with learning the layout routines on my Topcon CTS3007, but having two data collectors, I would never use it.
Good luck!
> That total station keypad looks identical to mine. What total station is that?
>
> Good luck!
GTS-255
Going out tomorrow for my first sub-freezing foray...28 degrees predicted at 0800. Dusting of snow too. Gotta make this a year round endeavor or I'll never get anywhere.
Gonna figure out what went wrong with my recent traverse.
I would've made the wife run the rod for me, so I didn't have to run back and forth moving that prism around!
I didn't even realize you could store coordinates in that gun, I was brought up on the data collector. I would've ended up writing down my horizontal angles and distances and re-turning them next year. The past few issues of the American Surveyor have had some good articles on programming an HP35s. That is a pretty cheap calculator that could be used for some temporary data collection
Kudos to your back yard test plot.
Great photo!
:gammon:
> I would've made the wife run the rod for me, so I didn't have to run back and forth moving that prism around!
She usually does but was busy doing other stuff.
> I didn't even realize you could store coordinates in that gun, I was brought up on the data collector. I would've ended up writing down my horizontal angles and distances and re-turning them next year.
The gun will store more than 3000 points. The software sucks though. If you use the coordinate file, there's a stakeout function that lets you sequentially turn the angle and then measures the difference in distance between where the rod man is, and the stake point; I think you can program it to beep when it gets to zero.
Haven't figured out how it works yet though...that's for after the snow melts.
I'm not sure about the stakeout routine, but if you zeroed your instrument on your back sight you have an assumed north that you could stake them out using the same routine with some pretty easy mental math.