Could use some help

>....Thence tangent to said curve South 35° 00' East an indeterminate distance....
Well ,that suckers going to close, isn't it? The ending point is the point of beginning, no matter what "an indeterminate distance" might turn out to be.

I gather this is in British Columbia, and a written metes and bounds description is a very rare thing in B.C. The procedure is to convert your beginning lat/long to a grid coordinate (MTM?), then scale the distances in the description appropriately, calc your courses, then convert the final coordinates back to lat/long. Good luck!

Bearings and Angles to the minute and distance to the centimeter are not up to ordinary survey precision standards.

You want someone to compute this out for you so you can find a geocache? Did I read that correctly?

Wouldn't that be cheating?

"I am looking for the ending coordinates"

Here's a hint. The ending coordinate should be the same as the beginning (POB) coordinate. The indeterminate distance in one of the calls will require a bit of creativity on your part. Think 'reverse engineer'. 😉

It Appears You Need To Engage A Surveyor

Either that or enroll in a college survey course or two.

You have a description that involves a fir amount of work, yet I think hiring a surveyor is your cheaper alternative.

Your beginning coordinates to 3 decimal places of a minute indicate +/- 1 meter in precision. That should be sufficient for a trained surveyor with proper equipment to locate a monument. However the source of those coordinates may be a device or record precise to only +/- 100 meters.

Have a good day.

Paul in PA

Not cheating...lol I have read where many look for help. I do appreciate a little guidance or even an answer. Whatever is offered I'll take. I have put it tons of work trying to figure it out but like I said this is way out of my area of knowledge. The fun part is I have already learned lots already so it is not a complete loss and I believe that's what geocaching is about. Learning new things and visiting new places.

As the format of the coordinates would suggest, they seem to match those of this puzzle geocache. Unfortunately, it is a premium-members-only cache, so most of us aren't going to see the actual cache listing, but only what was posted on our forum.
http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GCGTVX_weapons-of-math-instruction

I'll offer some advice, but won't give a numerical answer, if I can figure out what they are asking.

On more careful reading, I see that what he is trying to find is a geocache at a point along that traverse - not at the end. Because of the indeterminate distances, you have to work forward from the POB and also azimuths/bearings backward from the POB at the end of the description to find the point in the middle.

I think you may end up with a bearing-bearing intersection to solve. You may also have to find delta-north and delta-east values for the part of the traverse between the indeterminate distances, without knowing the actual points along that part of the traverse, in order to slide-translate values together and let you do the intersection, and then slide them back into their original position to find the point coordinates.

For how to use the curve data, which is probably the hard part for most people, you can go to any basic surveying textbook or on-line tutorial on highway curves to find formulas. I'll even offer my handy-dandy curve calculator program to help.

As to the comments people have made about precise geodetic information, I really doubt the originator of this puzzle intended anything but plane geometry calculations and an accuracy level consistent with recreational GPS.

Looking for the end coordinates....I take it to mean that the product you want is to figure out the coordinates of all the points. If not, as someone pointed out the end of the traverse goes "back to the point of beginning". You can find the point of beginning using gps. Without precise gps equipment you can't get a lot better than around 30 meters precision. Also if you want higher precision, you need to know what geoid model is being used for those coordinates. Also as someone pointed out they are not written out to a super-high precision anyway. Those are spherical coordinates. There should be a way to convert them to a plane coordinate standard you need to know the particular standard for wherever you are on earth. If you can do that, you can run calculations using plane coordinates. If you are looking to run them in spherical coordinates, that is more complicated math.

IF you are looking to just learn and don't know about any of this stuff, I would start by learning plane coordinates. I would assume a numerical northing and easting for the point of beginning and learn to calculate the latitudes and departures using simple trigonometry. (by simle trig, I am referring to plane trug as opposed to spherical). You can do most of this with Sines and Cosines. You need to know something about curves. To get just the coordinates at the end of the curve, the simplest might be to figure out the chord-bearing and distance and reduce it just is though it were another leg of the traverse. To get the non-specific distance, you will need to run one course backward from the point of beginning and put coordinates on that point.

Also fun, is converting the point of beginning to state plane coordinaes, or whatever plan-coordinate system you might have as a standard for your location.

No one knows your level of knowledge so we don't know if we need to explain the different parts of a curve, what a tangent is, anything about sines and cosines. We just don't know.

p.s. wizdumb1....funny nickname.:good:

End Coordinates Are N 49° 13.314 W 123° 01.073

I started to post before anyone else and did not realize it was a geocache game, and since it was raining here I got around to solving it.

It is a closed traverse so it ends up where it began. The trick is to solve the two indeterminate distances one in each traverse, i.e. the traverse to the geocache point and the traverse back. The most straightforward way to solve it is to not care where the waypoints are. The traverse out has 9 legs with the indeterminate distance on the eight leg and the traverse back has 7 legs with the indeterminate distance on the sixth leg.

Step 1. Solve the 8 given traverse legs and move the indeterminate length to the ninth leg.

Step 2. Using the POB solve the given 6 traverse legs moving the indeterminate distance to the seventh course.

Step 3. Use a bearing-bearing intersect to solve your geocache point.

You can then rearrange the courses as given, but it will not change you geocache position, which is all you really need.

BTW, for further precision certain curve courses should use the following 3 decimal place arc distances; 191.986m, 649.262m, 119.991m, 111.701m, 83.776m and 250.891m.

Let me know when you want the indeterminate distances.

Paul in PA

My Error, I Dropped A Course

Am resolving now.

In getting detailed instructions for wiz together I find there are 17 courses not 16.

Paul in PA

wiz emailed me and I replied I would respond here.

Suggestions for wiz, purchase the Boy Scout Surveying and Orienteering Merit Badge Books. While you are in the Boy Scout Shop look at some of the compasses they have. If you do not have one I suggest a Silva, not sure of the model, but it has a clear plastic rectangular shaped bottom piece for laying over maps and the 360° circle spins to allow compass/line orientation. It is not the most expensive model but is the most useful. I was Merit Badge Counselor for Engineering, Orienteering, Surveying and Rifle. I also ran Orienteering themed camporees and orienteering games at other Scout events. My father taught himself to survey from a 1960's era Surveying Merit Badge Book. That issue had cardboard cutouts with which you could make crude surveying instruments. Those cutouts are intact s my father started with a builders level and quickly upgraded to a Kegelman Brothers transit.

How to proceed.

We want to get from N 49° 13.314 W 123° 01.073 to the geocache coordinates. Since we have geometric bearings and distances in surveyors format it is best to stick with plane geometry. Therefore I began by assigning N 5000m E 5000m to the POB coordinates as Point 1. Once we have a resolved geocache position we can convert that N and E from our geodetic POB to a geodetic geocache position. I recommend that you number the courses from 1 to 17. Using a calculator with Sin, Cos etc. functions and at least 2 sheets of grid paper label the header on 1 sheet, this will be your coordinates list.

Pnt # N.nnn E.eee
1 5000.0000 5000.0000

Beginning at Pnt 1 the first course is N 60° E 150.000m

Cos 60 = 0.5000 * 150.000 = 75.000
Sin 60 = 0.8660 * 150.000 = 129.9038

Pnt # N.nnn E.eee
1 5000.0000 5000.0000
+ 75.0000 + 129.9038
2 5075.0000 5129.9038

At Pnt 2 the second course is N 30° W 60.000m

Cos 30 = 0.8660 * 60.000 = 51.9615

Sin 30 = 0.5000 * 60.000 = 30.0000

Pnt # N.nnn E.eee
1 5000.0000 5000.0000
+ 75.0000 + 129.9038
2 5075.0000 5129.9038
+ 51.9615 - 30.0000
3 5126.9615 5099.9038

At Pnt 3 the third course is N 60° E 90.000m

Cos 60 = 0.5000 * 90.000 = 45.0000

Sin 60 = 0.8660 * 90.000 = 77.9423

Pnt # N.nnn E.eee
1 5000.0000 5000.0000
+ 75.0000 + 129.9038
2 5075.0000 5129.9038
+ 51.9615 - 30.0000
3 5126.9615 5099.9038
+ 45.0000 + 77.9423
4 5171.9615 5177.8461

At Pnt 4 we have a curve concave SE with radius 125.000m. Since it is a tangent curve the radius line is 90° off our backline SE, that is to the right when traveling down that last line. The bearing of that radius line would be S 30° E which takes us to Pnt 5.

At Pnt 5 we complete the curve by using central angle of 60° and repeating the radius of 125.000m. The bearing of that radius line would be N 30° E which takes us to Pnt 6.

Continue in this manner through course number 8, then skip to course 10.

Now return to Pnt 1 and follow the description in a reverse direction from the end, i.e. course 17, skipping course 16, then courses 15 to 11. Use the direction from course 9 at the end of the first traverse and the reversed direction of course 16 at the end of the second traverse for a bearing-bearing intersect and the two indeterminant distances for your final solution.

If you lay your traverses out to scale on one piece of grid paper you can scale approximate distances and then reiterate for the final solution.

Paul in PA