All In All, It Sounds Like The New Manual Is A Piece Of Dung
Idealistic thoughts inserted in a previously well respected document.
I am glad I wasted no money in purchasing it. It is useless in retracing the public land surveys. Very useful for creating turmoil.
Paul in PA
All In All, your comments are A Piece Of Dung
You do express your thoughts very well!
Too bad!
dung?
It (the BLM Manual), like many authoritative texts and guidelines, is only useless if you can't or refuse to understand it.
What makes it really tough is admitting that one learned wrong and practiced incorrectly for many years or decades. It was tough for me to swallow, but believe me, it was worth it.
Go forth and sin no more.
I Did Not Learn Wrong, The New Manual Ignores 200 Years
The intent is to retrace the original survey. The new manual is no help in meeting that intent.
It is reasonable with todays technology to apply the new manual to surveys going forward, but not retracement. If you do not work for the government, do not bother with fresh dung. If you are employed by the government feel happy to be a pig in ....!
Paul in PA
Hmmmm?
All is good?
I Did Not Learn Wrong, The New Manual Ignores 200 Years
Are you drinking?
Sheesh
Someone learned wrong
One more time.
Have you ever retraced a section line in the PLSS?
East-West section Not to kick a dead horse, but.
My point is simply to show that the GLO did not, nor intend to run the E-W section lines on a true Parallel of Latitude and why I believe that is so.
Review 2-75 in the 73 Manual;
"The Base lines and standard parallels of the rectangular system are established on the true parallel of latitude; the random latitudinal township boundary lines are also projected on the same curve". it continues on and 2-76,2-77 and 2-78 explain how to stay on those parallels. No mention of section lines, nor do the field notes indicate that a parallel was ran. There are ample clues that support that the intent was never to run E-W section lines on a parallel, like you they realized that running a projected straight line a mile would not introduce enough error to cause those lines to be outside the standards that were in place. It would make little difference in the Continental USA by running those lines either way with the lengths limited to one mile, but by running the curve, the wrong method was used. I do know few agree with me on this and I don't intend to insult or expect to change anyone's mind, but I do have the right to speak my beliefs and note the sources that have led me to to the conclusions that I have reached over time on this matter.
jud
East-West section Not to kick a dead horse, but.
jud,
You certainly have a right to your experienced opinion and I happen to disagree.
And the world keeps turning, in spite of that.
I don't think you have answered my basic premise though on running the solar transit, which was the workhorse of GLO.
The line that it ran through timber and over the hills was a curved line and I don't think you can disagree with that?
In the very few instances that the instrument man could see a half mile or a mile (not very likely), he could have turned a 90 off the north line that was being run, and guided the flagman onto that line. And it would have been a straight line and would think nothing of it.
I also know that the procedures that I used in the transit and chain days must have come from the same procedures that GLO used for their years of running line. And that was that when I was running an instrument transit line, I would change the bearing of the east-west line when I was calculating my lats and deps on my random lines. This produced a curved line.
Obviously, as I have said before, we were not concerned with the finger length distances that we may be off by running a straight line instead of a curved line. I might add that the same procedures were used on running an east-west section center line and now the 2009 Manual states that the center line is run at a constant bearing. (In other words, curved)
I am sure that you are not convinced and so be it.
Keith
East-West section lines are not on a straight line.
Loyal,
I started this thread as almost a "joke", since Keith was wanting a plss conversation instead of all the nonrelative threads. (actually I didn't start this thread, it was a post within Keith's thread. Angel must have broken it out.) But I see it grew legs.
I agree with everything you said. The first time I heard this was more in the context of "if you're out there setting C-¼ corners 0.5 feet from an already-established monument" did you even take into account this curvature factor? mister expert-measurer?
I took a BLM Cadastral course back in '93 along with a lot of other local surveyors in Denver. When this was discussed, and we learned of the "little red book" that the BLM used to compensate for curvature of latitudinal lines, and how to calculate it. I heard a lot of surveyors muttering under their breadth. Surveying in this general area back in the '70s-'90's there was a general consensus that the actual center-of-section was the intersection of the opposing lines; period. A lot of surveyors, including the firm I worked for, set C-¼ corners and 1/16th corners at the calculated position at the intersection of lines on the plane; regardless of how close of a monument they found.
(well, not really directed at Loyal, it was just pertinent to what he said.)
East-West section lines are not on a straight line.
Good post adam,
The premise keeps poping up that apparently ONLY the original GLO corner monuments are holy and can never be moved or ignored, but then along comes some who will ONLY use those GLO corners to further subdivide the PLSS sections and ignore all monuments that are not original GLO.
I fail to understand that rationale, as it really puts all private surveyor monuments up for grabs, and can be ignored, because they are not at the exact intersection of the center lines?
Do some of you actually believe that, or is just "the way I was taught and the way it is done around here"?
Some may get tired of me harping on the subject, but I really feel (sorry Kent) that the problem of two lines within the section, because of this irrational rationale, is dead wrong.
And BLM needs to address it as they are doing it.
Keith
