I was requested to do a survey on about 200 acres consisting of 4 subdivision lots, bounded on the east by a county road, the west by a highway, the south by the new owner, in talking to them they were only concerned by the north boundary and the fence line along it.
I had done quite a bit of surveying in the area and one thing about these parcels is that the pins are in, but the bearings and distances are really sloppy.
Done in the mid 70's I'm guessing using stadia, 500' record distance is likely to be 510' or 490', the line is question runs east-westish, there are 5 corners, found brass cap at the east end, brass cap at the west end and one rebar being the first corner east of the west brass cap.
So I'm missing two monuments the first two leaving the county road and heading west.
I look at the math, there is 606' record and 611' measured, not too bad for the area, I calculate and adjust the three lines between the two found monuments, I put coordinates on the points and send them to TGO.
Then I turn on the fence line layer to see what it looks like, I'm 1.3 feet west of one fence corner and .8' of the other one.
DUH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What am I doing!!!!!!!!!!
I'm making something so simple so difficult, just put the pins at the FENCE CORNERS. :pissed:
Talk about getting caught up in the math and the adjusting and basically wasting time.:pinch:
We all like nice, tidy numbers that look reasonable. I endure that inner struggle all the time. In the end I close my eyes and repeat the following three times:
Correct is an identity, not a distance...
It is tough sometimes because it is easy to get wrapped up in using numbers to determine a reasonable position for corners. We all like to be able to rationalize, with bearings and distances, coordinates, error ellipses, and so on. That way, when an client or an attorney or whoever asks why we chose position A instead of position B, we can "dazzle them" with our awesome and "official looking" calculations.
But, sometimes, we just gotta step back and think, "Wait, what was the original intent?"
I miss that one a lot...
#thestruggleisreal