I tend to do more residential lots and I top out around 10 acres, so it's not an issue too often, but I wonder what is the most efficient way to traverse solo.
I tend to use a bipod backsite, set out my next traverse station with a mobile rod and then work my way back to the gun, and then to the bipod with my sideshots.
Pick up the bipod backsite, go back to the gun.
Bag up the gun leaving the bipod backsite. Rinse, lather repeat.
Anyone got a slicker system? Beside the "flick" deal with the reflective tape
BTW, I don't know what happened in the last month or so, but I am friggin' SWAMPED!
> BTW, I don't know what happened in the last month or so, but I am friggin' SWAMPED!
Me too. Yippee!
About half of my works is like yours, but the other is 40 to 120 acres.
I like to use three tripods for the traverse. All with tri-bracks that interchange with the instrument. Then use the rod for side shots along the way. This is when I can drive back and forth. Stake a lath for back-sights when on foot and bring one of the kids to be a mule. 😀
Scott
Most efficient. Cut off small trees, at about 4' up. tie lots of flagging around the top, just below the cut off, and place a 16d finish nail in the top, with accordion flagging, and a pinch of DOT reflector tape. That is a foresight, Setup Station, and a Backsight, all in one.
Carefully
That's pretty much what I do, too. My reflectorless does most of the sideshots topographic work. I have four prism poles with bipods and one plain prism pole, and two tripods and one reflector and tribrach mount.
My work is picking up, too. I will take jobs from lot surveys to section surveys, and from lot line surveys to ALTA's.B-)
We used to flop the scope and tie a ribbon on a 180 for the backsite. Then you would not have to go back for backsite. We still had good closures.
Now I do as much reflectorless as possible and GPS. In a real rural setting I have set two nails with bipods on them and then moved around the parcel shooting a resection back on the two points. If you have to traverse GPS two points at each end for closure. You have to look a solo traversing as a good work out and just get it done...
If you're doing solo, I assume you're working a robot. For me, if I were running a traverse, extra effort would be made to see that the basic traverse figure was done correctly (closure, least squares, etc). For traverse shots, I would take a "set" - forward and dumped to the backsight (which could be a bipod as you describe). Pick up bipod at backsight, walk to foresight, take dumped and forward shots to the foresight, completing the set. When done with the set, pick up bipod at foresight, and take your side shots. Rinse lather and repeat.
That said, I tend to do traverse work with three tripods, as described in one of the responses to this thread, and prefer the help of another. I'd say two men working this way will get double the work done vs one man trying to do it all. And at a higher level of precision.
For Some Things It Is Most Efficient To Have An Assistant
It is difficult to have all the right equipment to do everything solo. Efficiency includes the cost of resources. To have all the possible resources means that 50% may not be used in any one day. That is not efficient.
So sometimes we have to balance the efficiency of resources with the efficiency of labor. In my case it is usually the efficiency of resources that heads the list. I am about 95% solo on my own work. Today the landowner is digging holes for monuments.
Paul in PA
There's nothing wrong with the "flick" deal
You take a 36" 1/8" steel rod and put almost a foot of rod in the ground(at a very slight angle . . . not perfectly plumb) and use a small piece of reflective tape wrapped at the top.
The rod will remain very stable and a distance shot to it will be 1/16" off, which you can actually add to your offset if your so inclined.
These rods will give you very good backsites and foresights and for me, give me distances of 500-700 feet. For longer distances I add a small flat piece of reflecting tape.
The VERY SLIGHT angle results in something like . . . well, some very miniscule amount of error(again unless you adjust for it), from the top of the reflecting tape to the top of the rod, which is only(for me), about 1/8" higher at this very slight angle.
The "flicking", you speak of only comes into play, if you wish to set a more permanent traverse point.
I use 8"(sometimes 6"), nails and the nails almost always wind up about 2-3 inches from the base of the rod. ANYWAY . . . AFTER setting up over the top of the rod, I "flick" it very lightly, enough so that my laser plumb shows on the ground. I set the nail and in those rare occasions where the nail is not spot-on, I'll actually make note(in my field book), of the direction and distance(usually within 1/32"), of my "hot spot"(my setup), to the spot where the center of the nail is.
I also recheck to make sure the "flicking", didn't disturb the location of the top of the rod(it never has to date).
I can carry 10-15 rods with me and do a lot of surveying.
I also have some of those mini-rods with prism assemblies. I don't really trust the bubbles on these except for rougher work.
I use them the same way and will often set a prism about 4-5 feet high, but never more than a foot or so above the 4' or so that 2 sections(with the point), will give me. My idea is I usually set these more plumb(using the bubble), so that that last foot doesn't really amount to much at all. In any case I set up on the 4' rod end(actually 2X2' rod ends), remove the rod, then set my nail(which is almost always within about 1 1/4" or so).
I also spend a lot of time(well . . . not so much "time", shooting to all sorts of objects(I'm reflectorless... hardly any work at all), to anything that might help me recover the point later(after the hunters play little games with my points).
TRY IT . . . YOU'LL LIKE IT!
OOOPS
The second to last paragraph should be 1/4" . . . not 1 1/4".
But I'll also add that in my arsenal, I also use 48 inch rods too.
I'd never heard of this practice (not that I have that much field experience), but was surprised to find it described in Norman Van Valkenburgh's novel "Mayhem in the Catskills".
An excerpt from page 10:
He was striding along purposefully, swinging his double-bitted cruiser's ax, and glancing back impatiently now and then. ... He ... grasped a two-inch maple sapling that grew there. [looked both directions] Evidently all was in order, because he shook his head in apparent satisfaction, took a step back, and with a few swift and sure swings of the ax, chopped the sapling down so that the top of the remaining stump was about three feet high. This he fashioned into a point with his ax and tapped a tack i the top of the point, yelling to someone yet unseen, "Turn on it."
