Night Surveying

What the hell were you doing working at night?

I am a surveyor so I survey, I'll sleep when I am dead!

Seriously though, I jump for cash B :-)!

There are much more fun activities to occupy your time after the sun goes down than doing what you already did all day.

I'm just saying.

Hey, you do what you have to do to get the job done!

As an 82c in the Army, we did a majority of our work at night. At Ft. Hood it was the only way to go. No heat waves, crazy sight distances with lighted target sets, and it kept you out of the battery area and the KP and guard duty PIAs. You just had to figure out a way to catch some zees during the 100d days. It was always interesting.
A red-lens light works wonders as it won't disturb your night vision.

Another great robotic application-

How far from the office were you and how much REAL surveying did you do after dark?

It looks like a "just a few more shots/I need to find this one pin" situation.

I've had to take a couple of closing traverse shots on a bic lighter brightened plumb-bob string.

i've thought about doing some robot or rtk work at night on big ALTA jobs but never put it into practice. very cool. you are definitely an 'outside the box' kinda guy.

i jump for cash b!tch, too!

Carl, I am a surveyor, all my work is REAL surveying.

snoop, it is actually pretty fun and along the way you can learn various tips & tricks to help make it happen.

I have been doing it for a good while now when appropriate, more efficient, or just simply necessary to make the $.

Give it a whirl sometime...

We did a large urban project probably 1/2 of it between 11pm and 6am. Works well with the robot. The crew chief would have a patrol car sitting near the instrument most of the night and often they would walk around with him.
Worked better than I ever thought it would. And he liked it.

> Carl, I am a surveyor, all my work is REAL surveying.

OK, OK... I walked in to that one...

But do you really do it much at night? It seems like there is a possibility to miss so much.

I bet that is a lot better than in the day time dealing with traffic congestion, heat, and people out walking the streets, assuming the city is lit up like one would imagine.

I did some RTK work at night once, took some topo shots at low tide, in the tidelands:-)

Some survey tasks are doable in the dark and some not so much, if you are running short of time then do all the stuff you need daylight for first and save the night stuff for nightime.

He really enjoyed it. The police watched out for him and helped him locating manholes and such. Probably wouldn't work in the big city. It did lead to a lot of painting.

The post reminded me of my night surveying experience

I was away on a country job pegging a 25 block subdivision to find that ALL the accommodation in the entire district was booked out for a bi-annual field day. So decided to go back into field that night as the site was open and without public access, terrain was even and finish pegging as remote and TS were able to be illuminated.

Result finished pegging @ 11.30 pm and then drove 2.5 hours back to Adelaide with job completed .

Sure beat the alternative of sleeping in car.

RADU

We've done a boatload of surveying at night. Of course, more construction staking than boundary work. Busy right-of-ways are a lot safer after traffic dies down...if it dies down.

We did some work where they had to detour traffic around one of our highway bridges from 11.P.M. to 1 A.M. a few years ago. They put a fire truck, then a utility truck, then both on a two lane concrete bridge, while we checked for vertical deflection. There actually was a maximum of about .05' under the heaviest load. There were lights all over, but we still needed a little bit of flashlight to read the rod.