From the Field

Cool!!

azweig, post: 438415, member: 7041 wrote: A couple pics from last week's mission. Ended up locating an average of 2600 feet of rail at 9 different at-grade crossings in just over 2 days. I know the instrument is at the edge of the head of the legs in one picture, but things don't always go as planned when trying to set up in ballast.

:stakeout:

Ah yes, the ole legs in the ballast rock setup. It has to be about the most unstable surface material we have around here. I used to do A LOT of surveying for various railroad projects, and have set up in it hundreds if not thousands of times. This was my usual setup procedure: After the initial stomp and leveling of the instrument, I always used the leveling screws on the bottom of the gun to re-center over the point, re-level using the clamps on the legs, and a final fine tune leveling or two with the instrument screws. This keeps the robot from hanging off of the plate like that if it bothers you. I did it more out of necessity since not all legs have tri-max sized real estate on top.

P.S. That is a cool rail shooting rig you have there.

The KGB, post: 438428, member: 10394 wrote: Ah yes, the ole legs in the ballast rock setup. It has to be about the most unstable surface material we have around here. I used to do A LOT of surveying for various railroad projects, and have set up in it hundreds if not thousands of times. This was my usual setup procedure: After the initial stomp and leveling of the instrument, I always used the leveling screws on the bottom of the gun to re-center over the point, re-level using the clamps on the legs, and a final fine tune leveling or two with the instrument screws. This keeps the robot from hanging off of the plate like that if it bothers you. I did it more out of necessity since not all legs have tri-max sized real estate on top.

P.S. That is a cool rail shooting rig you have there.

It used to really bother me that the instrument wasn't close to being centered. Now, as long as it's stable, I just roll with it. This is the only type of work that I do nowadays. The trolley is pretty amazing!