@john-hamilton By the way, John, what sort of accuracy do you think you were able to get with those Polaris observations? Were you doing elongation or hour angle or some other technique?
This takes me back. Mid to late 70's I was hired through an employment agency so I got paid more than the chiefs that had been there for years and were older than me. So they put me out doing boundaries of raw land so I wouldn't see the other guys. Wild?ÿ T2 and HP 3860??ÿ I loved it. John Nolton's description of turning sets looks tedious, but once you got it, it was fast and fun. But then after a few months I got sent to chief their Mass.State Highway crew which sucked. 4 man crew, engineering students, we weren't allowed to work but 3 hours a day. I quit.
I miss my old T2, but I did manage to pick up a crisp T1 model 70 a while back..
@thebionicman Were you at the conference?
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Regarding the T1, if I'm not mistaken the T1 and T16 were both 6" instruments. What was the difference between them?
Great looking combination, by the way. That just looks like "surveying".
@shawn-billings I presented.???? The model 70 is a 6" least count, but you can easily crack to 1 second with two sets.
if I'm not mistaken the T1 and T16 were both 6" instruments
The T16 I used had a least-count of 1-minute, I think we estimated to the nearest 10 or 20 seconds.?ÿ As I recall, the new-style (micrometer) T1 reads direct in 6-second increments.
@shawn-billings Hi Shawn. My partner and I (the late Ben Blackburn, former President of Florida Society of Professional Land Surveyors) bought the T2 as part of a package for our Clermont, Florida office. In addition to the T2, it also included the Wild Distomat DI10, and assorted tripods/prisms, etc. for $12,000. I'm thinking the T2 itself was around $4,000. As a point of reference a brand new 4wd '72 Chevy Blazer cost us $3,900. I had purchased the Kern (for personal use) a couple years earlier while I was still Forest Engineer for a paper company, from Ben Meadows Company in Atlanta for a little under $4,000.
Ben always hated the Kern, and called the unique tripod setup a "Donkey di%$". Both theodolites produced excellent angle closures. When I left the company and headed South to Ft. Lauderdale, Ben kept the T2, and I kept the Kern. Lately, ben getting a bit nostalgic and considered looking for a well kept Kern.
@jim-frame Good points Jim. I had forgotten what you just brought up. I used the T2 and the Kern DKM with both methods, depending on if laying out, or if running traverses.
@john-nolton I probably shouldn't have had a problem, but (for me) it was never as fast as setting up a tribrac/T2 over a tall object.
I remember the T-16's being ordered with maybe 20 seconds or 6 seconds or tenths of a minute.?ÿ Not sure but earlier ones may have had split bubble.?ÿ Some reading with inverted images.?ÿ I remember purchasing several in the 80's from a?ÿ supplier in Denver and another in Lost wages.?ÿ?ÿ
Sold my T-2 to a firm I went to work for.?ÿ Last used it for solar observations using software Terry Nygaard wrote for the MC-2 to position an antenna on a mountain with bunch of secret squirrels inside.?ÿ They were all impressed.
Just got a T-1A off the shelf to see if I could still read it - had to clean the lenses.?ÿ Thanks to Shawn and all?ÿ for the post as?ÿ there is nothing like the machining that went in to that era of survey equipment.
My first Wild instrument I used was a 1969/70 was a T-16 with a K&E Microranger.?ÿ Remember Gene Hunneycut sold it to my boss and Earl Dudley came down from Birmingham to show us how to use it.
Agree, the T-2 is probably one of the best all around theodolites.
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@i-ben-havin That's great information.
I just ran the inflation calculator from 1972 to 2020 (I don't think we really know what the current inflation is, so I backed up a couple of years). In 1972, $4,000 would be equal to $25,000 in 2020. Likewise in 1972, $12,000 would be roughly $75,000 today.
Now that is a huge sum of money. I think most small surveying companies could outfit a crew (less the vehicle) with good quality, new RTK, robotics, and all ancillary tools and accessories for less than $75,000.?ÿ
Having said that, I suspect that a 35-year-old surveyor in 1950 could have bought a T2 and never needed another theodolite for the rest of his career, whereas technology today moves so quickly that a new RTK system and robot will likely be obsolete in 10 years or less, so the return of investment becomes much more precipitous. Of course, given the production gains today's equipment gives, it's not hard to recoup the investment in a much shorter time.
I recall Dad said he looked at buying a Wild or a Topcon theodolite when he started business in the early 1980's. I don't recall the exact numbers, but I think the Topcon was $4,000 and the Wild was $6,000 (maybe more). He was looking at 6" instruments. He ended up with the Topcon and did some really great work with it. Even with the cumbersome use of a top-mount EDM, it gave up nothing to the later total stations we used, except for convenience in operation, setup, and transport. The actual results were just as good.
@i-ben-havin?ÿ ?ÿBen I found the same thing as you did; that being I could set up faster with a Wild tripod than the Kern. You had more movement of the Wild instrument on the head of the Wild tripod than the Kern instrument on it's Kern tripod
@thebionicman Were you the guy having the tent revival? ?????ÿ
@shawn-billings?ÿ Shawn I had to cut short my post above but if you look up the one reference about Specifications to Support Classification........ you will find on page 8 the settings to use. And of course you will change the minutes and the seconds. So you said 6 D&R you wanted to do: The Wild T2 has a 10 minute micrometer drum so make sure you are looking at that in the table.
1st set?ÿ 0-0-10
2.?ÿ ?ÿ ?ÿ ?ÿ ?ÿ30-01-50
3.?ÿ ?ÿ ?ÿ ?ÿ 60-03-30
4.?ÿ ?ÿ ?ÿ ?ÿ90-05-10
5.?ÿ ?ÿ ?ÿ 120-06-50
6.?ÿ ?ÿ ?ÿ ?ÿ150-08-30
Now when you look at SP247 look at page 8 (another page 8, see above) #6 circle settings: and also on page 277. Page 277 will lead you to USC&GS report of 1884, Appendix No. 8, where Assistant George Davidson gave formulas about circle setting.
Off course there is more literature on the subject and I will leave that up to you to?ÿ find.
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JOHN NOLTON
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