I mentioned before that everyone in my department is being required to take the CST tests next month. I am going in at level 3 and am not so much worried about myself, but I have 12 guys that are sort of "green" that are taking the level 1. When I say green I mean that they have only the experience that they have here and very little exposure to land surveying. The level 1 example test on the NSPS site has only about 25 questions and they have all practiced and practiced on it. We have bought just about every text book available for them to study, but a lot of it is over their heads as far as where they are in their career and especially that they do not get much practical application for most of it here. That being said, they are all motivated to pass and I have been searching for some other resources ie practice exams and am coming up blank for anything lower than an LSIT. I thought maybe I would see if all of the sage minds here would mind giving some questions that you might ask of young green guys that may be similar to what they might see on their upcoming test. My goal is to put together a practice test for them with a hundred questions or so.
Thanks for any input
You run a level loop that closes within specifications for the job. The difference in elevation between the known and unknown point is +2.50'. Unfortunately, after completing the loop, when you take the rod out at the next job 2 hours away, you notice that the rod must have been damaged at some time and fixed. The bottom of the rod is actually at the half foot mark instead of 0.
Which is the true difference in elevation?
+2.00'
-2.00'
+3.00'
+2.50'
go back and run the loop again
Are they giving four or five choices these days?
I think the questions at this level are more about understanding what is going on than about heavy math. Could be wrong.
Andrew L Harbin's manual is about as low as they go! Alibris.com has used copies for less than ten bucks.
You may be able to download TM 5-232 (August 1964) (An Army manual)
daw
UH Professor Emeritus
We did the same thing as you are doing.
We made up some of our own tests using questions from some of the textbooks and from other manuals which had questions at the end of the Chapters.
Use some from "43560 questions about Surveying" or something like that.
Take some questions from the First Aide Book.
Make up a few of your own and have the more experience people do the same.
It is a great thing you are doing and will positively affect the beginning surveyors.
Way to go!
I copied the following from a email I recently sent a new guy who was looking for some online resources.
Here are some links from my interweb bookmarks survey folder.
The caltrans LSIT course is a good one, as someone who has not yet worked in boundary surveying I think you may find units 12-15 particularly interesting.
http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/row/landsurveys/LSITWorkbook/WorkbookTOC.html
Here is the caltrans survey manual, this is a good example of the sort of resource that you can find online, there is lots of good information but it is often harder to find than it should be due to the tilt of search engines to sell stuff.
http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/row/landsurveys/SurveysManual/Manual_TOC.html
Here is a link to some trig-star problems, they are a nice practice when re-visiting trig. If you change the number after "sample" and before the ".pdf" you can get other problems.
http://www.nspsmo.org/_data/global/images/PDF%20Documents/NSPS/Sample1.pdf
Here is the link to the virtual museum of surveying site, the site is kind of wonky but there is some good info in there.
/End copy paste
I can think up some questions but do not know if I feel like thinking up the answers.
What is the difference between a blunder and an Error?
Define the following PC PT PI PRC PCC PT POT POC
I would do a question that lumps stationing, slope, and offset together like define the cut/fill at STA: X+XX.XX yada yada
Then take em all into the parking lot and test their pacing and ability to site down line.
It's an open book test and I believe there is a sample exam out there. I have level III in Construction and boundary.
Ralph
