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Decimal minutes

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Strictly Surveying

Last Post by chris-bouffard 4 years ago

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stacy-carroll

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Every once in a while I follow a surveyor that sometimes used degrees, minutes, decimal minutes instead of the usual degrees, minutes, seconds. His plats are the only ones I ever recall using that format. The inexperienced crew chief could get burned by mistakenly trying to use the decimal minutes as seconds. The first time I encountered that format, I wasn't sure about my interpretation until I tried closing the plat. Probably took half an hour since I had to convert every course to ddmmss. I couldn't figure out how to get the hp48 data collector to accept the ddmm.m format. Was that format common in other areas?

Me. "What's the difference?"
T.C. Carroll "It's the difference between right and wrong!"

Posted : March 19, 2023 2:23 am

mathteacher

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The scary part is that decimal minutes is common in recreational GPS.

Posted : March 19, 2023 5:46 am

GaryG

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NeveR saw that. I have seen decimal seconds, and just wonder WHY?

Posted : March 19, 2023 6:14 am

antcrook

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NMEA output is in degrees, minutes, decimal minutes.

Posted : March 19, 2023 10:57 am

Glenn Borkenhagen

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Perhaps the surveyor whose work the OP was following was using an instrument like the Wild T16, which reads to minutes and then you interpolate to get the seconds. It is pretty easy to estimate to tenths of a minute and multiply by 60 for the seconds.

Perhaps the surveyor in question skipped the multiply-by-60 part and just reported the decimal minutes?

Posted : March 19, 2023 5:28 pm

stacy-carroll

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That surveyor was a dual registrant and practiced until the late 90's (or thereabouts). He was the only one at that time that regularly ran Astronomic North. His surveying was well above average.

Me. "What's the difference?"
T.C. Carroll "It's the difference between right and wrong!"

Posted : March 19, 2023 7:19 pm

jhframe

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Every once in a while I follow a surveyor that sometimes used degrees, minutes, decimal minutes instead of the usual degrees, minutes, seconds.

I've seen it on a few old maps around here. It's not common, though.

Posted : March 19, 2023 10:17 pm

david3038

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That surveyor was a dual registrant and practiced until the late 90's (or thereabouts). He was the only one at that time that regularly ran Astronomic North. His surveying was well above average.

I'm guessing Mr. Downs? I love following his surveys.

He liked to have some odd graphic scales too.

He got his start with Mr. McLeroy.

Posted : March 20, 2023 5:20 am

stacy-carroll

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